Why Academy-Route Players Make it to Europe Ahead of NPFL Counterparts

There is a widely-held belief that players who choose to go through a Nigerian Football Academy, compared to those who play in Nigeria's top elite league, end up making it to teams in the Top Five European Leagues i.e. England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and France. If you closely watch transfer news from Nigeria, then this belief is more real than fiction. However, one question that is rarely asked is: Why is that the case? This is an important question for several reasons. (1) Nigerian players state often that their ultimate career goal is to play in Europe, (2) Transferring to a Top 5 European league symbolizes that the transferee is a better football player, (3) Transferring to a Top 5 European league increases opportunity for a better pay day and (4) Top 5 European League brings higher profile and visibility back in Nigeria. Thus, it is important to investigate and possibly confirm the above phenomenon.

Method & Limitations

We use Nigerian news coverage of football labor transfers from Nigeria to foreign countries as source of data for this study. The data are drawn from the 2015 year to 2018, a total of four years. Of course, data from 2018 is much smaller than each of the other three years because the summer transfer is yet to take place. While this provides us quick and easy data, it is important to recognize that such data are unlikely to represent an exhaustive record of all football transferees within the studied period. For instance, we have 82 players in our data set from the studied period. Over 50% of those are players transferring directly from the Nigerian elite league within the studied period. However, we feel that are larger number of academy players may have also been transferred but are not captured by the Nigerian media.

In any case, and in spite of limitations, we believe that the method provides probably far more data than would have been necessary for an adequate sample. However, there is at least one other limitation. This one is based on degree of accuracy of each data point. By this, one refers to the fact that there may be a few reports that fail to provide all needed information.

Examined Data

A few things jump right up as data are examined. First, it is apparent that a small to negligible number of Nigerians transfer to the Top 5 leagues. It does not matter whether those players are from academies or from Nigeria's elite league. Examples from the last four years are Taiwo Awoniyi, Victor Osimhen, Orji Okonkwo, and Jack Ipalibo who went to England, Germany, Italy, and Spain respectively. Only Osimhen has progressed to the first team of the club that signed him -- Wolfsburg. Ipalibo is playing in the B squad of his team in Spain and both Awoniyi and Okonkwo are loaned out to other clubs. The rest of transferees from Nigeria are outside the Top 5 leagues (see Table 1).

Popular destination for Nigerian transferees are Scandinavian countries (Norway is most preferred), West Europe (most preferred is Belgium), or an East European country. In the data, bear in mind that transfers to Scandinavian countries are summed up in the West Europe dataset. Figure 1 shows that players from the academies mostly move to clubs in West Europe, compared to Figure 2, which indicates more focus on West Europe compared to African destinations.

For players from elite Nigerian leagues, the Middle East and other African countries are the traveling end posts. In 2015, players headed to Oman, Iran, and Qatar. In 2017, no less than three players from the league -- Anifowoshe (MFM), Daniel Etor (Rangers), and Ifeanyi Edeh (El Kanemi) -- all ended up at Omanian clubs. The African route is much traveled by Nigerian league players with destination points scattered all over the continent including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, South Africa, Guinea, Libya, and Zambia (see Figure 2). Although, the African route is rarely traveled by players from the Nigerian academy, at least three such players ended up in Africa. In 2016, two academy players also moved to Mozambique.

What Did We Learn?
If the assumption is that the Top 5 European leagues represent quality transfer destination, then very few players move directly to such quality destination from Nigeria, whether they come from the Nigerian elite league or from academies. Most of the transferees to Europe end up in Scandinavia, Belgium, or East European countries. Those destinations, essentially, serve as a bridge to get to quality destinations. It is a route often used by academy players who are able to get into Europe more easily because their declared ages are often within the range where there is no immediate pressure to play for the senior squad of European clubs. Instead, they may start from the B squads or even club academies in Europe.

But such luxury of access for players coming from Nigerian academies are often not available to players coming from the Nigerian leagues. Why? Players from Nigerian elite league are expected to be the finished product and cannot be afforded time to develop in B teams or European club academies. They must be of the quality to make the senior squad of European clubs or are not signed at all. For such players, if Europe is not accessible, the bridge points can be found at clubs in the Middle East or in Africa.