25 April, 2008

Sierra Express

Bellamy to Open $4m Football Academy in Salone

Former Blackburn Rovers, Liverpool, and Newcastle United striker, Craig Bellamy will at sometime in June this year launch a project to build a four million dollar football academy in Tombo on the outskirts of the capital Freetown. The Wales and West Ham United star who was in town last year was on a feasibility study in order to know when and where to open this multipurpose Craig Bellamy Football Academy in the country.

One of the Coordinators of this project, Durosimi Thomas, said that Craig Bellamy's initiation to open a football academy in Sierra Leone is out of the passion this star has for Sierra Leoneans and the game of football as a whole. Thomas maintains that the government has already allocated a twenty-five acre piece of land in Tombo Village for this project.

According to him the selection of players into the academy will be done at district level whereas all districts will produce a youth team after which they will engage themselves into inter district or inter area football competitions to pick out the forty-five best from all regions as the first set of students into the academy.

He said the academy is going to have two international standard playing pitches, a swimming pool, classrooms, a hostel, a gym and other vital facilities.

"If all works out well this is going to be one of the best football academies in West Africa", Mr. Thomas concluded.

It is believed the academy will start full operations in March 2009 and while he is here to launch the project in June he will watch the Leone Stats versus South Africa match in Freetown before he departs.

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