NNPC/ SHELL Cup Has Become A Feedstock Fot National Teams, Says Adekoya..

The organisers of the year's edition of NNPC/SHELL Cup say the aim of staging the annual age-grade football competition is to create a platform for the discovery of teenage football players from the secondary schools.

The Non-Technical Risk Manager of Shell, Bolaji Adekoya, who represented the General Manager, External Relations, Igo Weli, said the company was delighted and proud of the reduction in the number of boys who would had abandoned education in pursuit of a career football since the competition started nineteen years ago.

According to Adekoya, the championship has become a veritable feed stock for the nation's national teams and professional league in Nigeria as many football players had been discovered from the Nigerian Secondary Schools, adding that a number of them had graduated to the under-twenty-three team and the Super Eagles.

While noting that the competition has become a permanent fixture in the Nigeria School Sports Calendar, the Non-Technical Risk Manager, said the partnership with the Feyenoord Rotterdam's Youth Academy had paved the way for a week coaching clinics for the teams that reached semi-final.

Two Most Valuable Players, MVP, will go to the Netherlands for coaching opportunity with the Feyenoord Rotterdam Youth Academy as the top ten talents would be eligible to compete for NNPC/SHELL University Undergraduate Scholarship.

A total of eight point two million naira has been earmarked towards the development of sports facilities in top four schools while the eventual winner gets three point five million naira, two point three million naira for second placed team just as the third place squad gets one point three million naira.

The competition, will end on Thursday, twenty-ninth of June, at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere