About the Competition
Our aims, ambitions and Objects of the Competition
The benefits of the sports tournament
The future vision of the Tournament
About the Competition
The African Nations Cup UK takes place every year and has been in place for over 2 years as a minority community tournament in the UK.
Played every summer (August) each year, the competition has been a two days tournament on exclusive 11 aside pitches and of open age from different UK African countries representatives with participating countries being Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Senegal, South Africa, Burundi, Ivory Coast, Bokina Faso, Mozambique, Mali, Angola, Cameroon, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Egypt and Somalia.
Orientation
Our tournament is a community based establishment. We want to engage in issues, activities and programmes that are community based and are to the benefits of our communities and society at large. We are an all inclusive establishment. We want to provide and promote harmony within the communities we live in and the society at large.
It is sponsored by local businesses and we are affiliated with the FA.
Sponsors: B-Magazine Ltd, Acts Property Maintenance, UrbanFilmz International and Travel link.
Our aims, ambitions and Objects of the Competition
. To provide an open forum for tackling key issues and challenges facing African football communities.
. To enable and empower African communities to create new opportunities and open pathways through the development of strategic partnerships.
. To create sustainable opportunities in participation and open pathways to access football at all levels of the game by providing opportunities to access funding, partnerships, coaching, training and education.
. To increase representation and equity for the African football community in top flight football.
Ambitions
Through this competition, our ambition collectively and severally is to play the gracious game of football at the highest level in this country. We believe that given the opportunities available to us in this country and one day, the competition will produce individuals to participate at the highest level of football in this western world.
Objectives
. We want to provide a healthy and amicable social activity of interaction for our younger and old members of our communities.
. We are focused on developing the younger talents in our community by providing a spring board which will help them progress their individual talents to higher levels and greener pastures.
. We envisage that by forming and running this African Nations Cup UK, we are providing our younger generations mainly the adolescents and the youth a more productive alternative that will draw them away from destructive behaviour and activities.
. We want to teach ourselves the basic concept of team work in our lives and also how to live and work with people from different cultures.
. To encourage the adoption of healthy lifestyles and to contribute to improving the well being and quality of life of people of all ages and abilities hence living more healthy lives
. Football being a social activity, our tournament provides us with an opportunity of meeting as people from the same community and interacting with one another with the aim of getting to know each other better and how we can help each other, even on personal issues.
. Learning from the best; when we move around playing games all over the country, we appreciate the footballing culture of this country and the infrastructure. And this is a point of enlightment for us who come from the 3rd world.
The physical, personal, and social benefits of the sports tournament.
Valuing preparation
The football tournament will help the young ones learn how to distinguish between effort and ability. It will increase self-discipline and the awareness of the value of preparation because they will see and analyse the difference in their performance.
Resilience
The game will provide an unparalleled model for dealing with disappointment and misfortune. They put in extra time on fitness or work on specific weaknesses in their game with their respective groups.
Attitude control
Older teens learn that a confident attitude improves their performance, and that they have some control over their attitude hence improving their game.
Long-term thinking
They will learn the fundamental lesson of sacrificing immediate gratification for long-term gain.
Relationships with other teen players
Football players develop relationships with their team mates. For boys, football is a primary, and unfortunately sometimes the sole, way of socializing with others.
Diversity
Our organized sports project sponsored by local clubs and local businesses offers players an opportunity to meet a variety of players from different backgrounds. Players from public, private and local community clubs come together in a common enterprise, crossing socio-economic and ethnic lines, so that over the time all players broaden their sense of how other people live. The genuinely multicultural environment is of tremendous importance in our polarized society.
Participating in a community
Football fosters a sense of community: It gives both participants and spectators the experience of belonging to something larger than themselves, the need for which seems to be hard-wired into the human brain.
Playing for an organisation or a community gives individuals a chance to feel that they are making a genuine contribution to a larger group.
The future vision of the Tournament
On the back of a successful project, through current networks, the opportunity will be given for a large sponsor to put their name to the project in return for funds to continue the growth throughout other UK cities.
The project will specifically target areas of social deprivation or areas of high anti-social behaviour. It will bring together the whole community.
As a result of this programme, anti-social behaviour reports will be monitored to measure the social impact it has, training opportunities will be offered for the young people by local clubs that will increase the viability and improve the range and quality of sports options available within the community.
We will ensure that all football clubs are reaching out to every community.
The African Nations tournament believes that football, as the world’s most popular game, can help to bring together people from different backgrounds to play, watch and enjoy the game, and to break down barriers created by ignorance or prejudice.
We will aim to ensure that everyone who plays or watches football can do so in a safe environment, without the fear of racial abuse and harassment, in either a verbal or a physical form. We want to increase the participation of people from ethnic minorities in football, as either players, spectators oremployees.
Our tournament will use football to break down barriers between communities and to increase the participation of young people from those communities in the game.
Therefore, once they get involved in a sports activity they like, they will get organized and start doing things the right way and get enormous benefits which will make them feel good as whole human beings. They will start living their lives happily.
And of course not forgetting one thing; To have fun!