By Amaechi Agbo

Indeed, the saying that reward for good work is more work could not have been more apt as the Dreamland Football Academy has been encouraged to do more after the Abia State-based youth development academy bagged two different awards for pioneering grassroots football development system in Nigeria, Bestchoicesports.com.ng can report

Dreamland Football Academy, the organiser of the Dreamland/Embassy of Hungary Grassroots Football Tournament received the two awards in 2018 and 2019.

First to come in was TopSports Afrik Merit Award, Warri, Delta state who gave the academy award as the ‘Best Sports Scouting Tournament in Nigeria’ while in 2019, Hyperfunk Entertainment, Abuja presented an award to the academy for being ‘The Abuja 2019 Best Grassroots Football in Nigeria’, the two awards were presented to the Chief Executive Officer of the Dreamland Football Academy, Mr Ndudi Edede.

 Speaking of the mission and vision of the fastest rising football academy in the country, Mr Ndudi said that at inception, the academy was set up to discover talents, promote education, crate jobs and promote peace in the country.

“The past two competitions in Abuja have attracted some merit awards from some quarters such as TopSports Afrik Merit Award, Warri, Delta state who gave the academy award as the ‘Best Sports Scouting Tournament in Nigeria’ and Hyperfunk Entertainment, Abuja presented an award to the academy for being the Abuja 2019 Best Grassroots Football in Nigeria.

“Before the commencement of the tournament, we set out our objectives and at the end we measured the event based on our set targets and we discovered that all of them were achieved.

“For instance, our first objective was to make it one of the top-quality youth tournaments in the country and we achieved that.

“Secondly, part of our objectives was to use sports to promote education among the youth and we did that because most of the boys selected for abroad trip, perhaps some might have dropped out of school but the good news is that once they get to their country of destination, they will continue their education in the clubs’ academies.

“We also targeted creation of job through sports and we achieved that too because all the players that have been selected, when they travel to Bulgaria or Hungary, they will be successful and once they are successful, they will begin to earn living from there through sports.

“Our next target was to promote peace and unity among the youths. As the players were gathered in Abuja for the tournament, they made friends among themselves, they interacted and among all they, networked. During the tournament, there was nothing like fighting, they were all in competition mood. Basically we archived all that we set out to achieve and that is why I will say the tournament was massive,” Mr Ndudi said in an exclusive interview with Best Choice Sports.