Nurturing talent in Côte d'Ivoire

REPORT

In yet another sign of the expansion of the Benfica brand internationally, the final stage of the selection of young players for future integration into the Benfica Campus Côte d'Ivoire, a project resulting from the collaboration between SL Benfica, the Ivorian Government and Sportify Capital, was completed.

From December 10 to 12, at the Sports Complex of the National Institute of Youth and Sports in Abidjan, which will also be the “home” of the future Benfica Campus Côte d'Ivoire, 192 young people born between 2002 and 2014 took part in the competition.

In the end, 132 athletes were selected who, from next year, will be part of the Benfica Campus Côte d'Ivoire on a permanent basis, in the various age groups. Training is scheduled to start in January.

"At international level, SL Benfica, through its Board of Directors, and in particular through Benfica International, is creating a constellation of academies. And we are clearly looking to focus on talent. That's what we're focused on, and in coordination with our training department, we've been looking at countries that are strategically important for SL Benfica," explains Miguel Reis, the Club's global International Expansion coordinator.

Carlos Costa, Fábio Alfredo and Ricardo Costa are the Benfica coaches assigned to the project, under the coordination of Pedro Alegria, who led the entire recruitment process and will continue on site to lead and guarantee the implementation of the Benfica methodology at Benfica Campus Côte d'Ivoire.

As he tells us in this report, the challenges were many, from the logistics to the players and the “problems” in Africa.

"We had a lot of help from our local partner, which was crucial for us to be able to have the success we ended up having," says the technical coordinator of Benfica Campus Côte d'Ivoire.

At the end of September, a recruitment process began with 31 actions in 31 locations across the country. For more than two months, Benfica's team of coaches toured the entire Ivorian coast and observed around 20,000 young people out of a total of around 30,000 registered.

"For us, Benfica, it was important to go to these children, meet them and give them the opportunity to live their dream and to be able to join the Benfica Campus Academy. It was a very extensive operation, with nearly 20,000 athletes to observe, but it was extremely important and vital for the project," reveals Davide Gomes, technical coordinator for International Projects.

Pedro Alegria completes: "We felt that there were often children who didn't come to the trials, especially in the inland areas, because they had to decide between finding money for transportation or finding money to eat."

Having traveled more than 5,000 kilometers across the country during this period, Benfica was represented by members of the Club's central structure and also present were Lancine Diamondé, CEO Sportify Capital Benfica Campus Côte d'Ivoire, Touré Nambo, Inspector of Sport, representing the Minister of Sport, and Habib Sanogo, Director General of the National Institute of Youth and Sport. A strong local institutional presence, revealing the importance and impact that this project anticipates in the development of local football.

Once the selection has been finalized, training is scheduled to begin in January 2025. "What we have to do now is take the selected players who will be staying at the Benfica Campus Côte d'Ivoire Abidjan Academy. We've got the teams set up, we're going to start working with these players every day, start developing and training them, teaching them what our methodology is with the expectation of what our goal is in youth football, which is to develop and find players who could one day be part of SL Benfica's first team," says Davide Gomes.

For Pedro Alegria, “it was a nice surprise.” "It was originally planned to be for young people aged 14 to 20, but we had children as young as 10 wanting to take part. We had a lot of people over the age of 20 wanting to take part because everyone was meeting their dream of one day being able to represent SL Benfica. The contribution of knowing the Benfica brand and the Benfica methodology was recognized by everyone," he sums up, with examples of the selected players.

"We played a few games with them and some training sessions. With all the knowledge we brought, we felt that they were really enthusiastic," he says.

For Miguel Reis, the pride of "contributing to the legacy of SL Benfica, not only in Portugal but also in the world" stands out.

"I say Portugal, because we're clearly going to bring players into Benfica's first team within the scope of our mission, because that's the mission of Benfica's entire youth system. It's a feeling of legacy, because Benfica expands in the best way it knows how, which is to create talent, and I think that's the mark we're going to leave all over the world."