Grooming professionals is my goal – Coach Egbesakin, Knights FC Coach

KFCTV recently sat down with the head coach of Knights Football Club, Coach Sunday Egbesakin to discuss the current state of the club and other related matters including his personal journey from a grassroots coach to NLO coach.

Setting eyes on him, you will mistake him for one of the players of the club or just someone hanging around the training facility to enjoy the training. Standing at five feet and some inches with boyish face, that never stopped him from impacting the lives of many youths and young adults in the city of Ile-Ife and Osun in general.

Growing up, he never dreamt of becoming a coach, his goal is to become the best player he could be and possibly one day become a professional player.

The inspiration to become a coach came around the time he started training as a player. According to him, whenever he come back from training, his younger brothers always came to him to teach them what he learnt in training. This continue and before he knows it, their friends started coming over and eventually became a routing that led to the formation of his first team he coached.  This was just a casual thing at that time until he got injured and couldn’t continue playing. Instead of giving up on Football, he started coaching his boys full time and his career as coach started.

Coach Egbesakin is arguably the most underrated grassroots coach in Osun State, and this is due to many factors including his young age. As a young coach, he has won many competitions at local, state and national level, notably 2017 Copa Coca-Cola under 15 National Champion and he hasn’t reached his prime yet.

Working with Knights FC:

As a coach with ambition, He believes in taking on bigger challenges and this is what drove him to joining Knights FC. That time and up till now, Knights FC is the highest-ranking Club in Ife/Ijesha and one of the NLO Division 1 club in Osun, joining this club will be a boost in his coaching career. Knights FC were working to revive their Football academy, even though the academy is existing on paper and fully affiliated with the Osun FA, it never function. Within few months, the academy has seen tremendous improvement. According to the General manager of the club, he didn’t expect to see such change within the short period, even though he knew Coach Egbesakin is a talented coach and never had any doubt about him leading the academy but seeing results as quickly as this gives him hope about the future of the club. This led to his assignment as the assistant coach of the Football club during the 2021 NLO season. After the 2021 NLO season, he became the interim coach of the club, eventually head coach while continuing his job as the academy head coach as well.

Being the head coach of the Club didn’t start well. It was at that period the club was going

through many challenges that nearly led to the collapse of the club. This didn’t stop him from performing his job and in the process building a new set of players for the club after many of the league players didn’t return. Some of these players left for many reasons, among them is Coach Egbesakin being the coach. They believe he is too young and inexperience to lead them. When he was asked about this, his response was “this is how you know they are not ready to be professionals, you can leave a club for many reasons, the age of a coach or his experience should not be a reason. The club believed in me, and they know what I can do to turn things around and that’s my focus for now”

Like he said, things are turning around, he was able to build new set of players with professional mind, the academy are performing exceptionally well in various competitions at local and state level. The club is now enjoying fresh legs through their academy graduates. For the first time in the club history, they were able to register more than 10 of their academy players in the league and they are doing well.

These and many more are things that make him an exceptional coach. he never let that get over his head, he believes he is still learning, and he can improve more in many areas including getting his professional coaching certificate and other certificates that can make him go higher in coaching world. In his closing remarks, he appreciates his brothers for believing in him, all the clubs and academies he had worked with including Difference Academy in ife. He thanked Coach Ejalo and Coach Shina Afolabi for being his mentors and father figures in his coaching career. He said he is always open to anyone in the community that need coaching advice as well as football advice. He urges youths that may think they can’t make it in football to think again, playing is just one area of football, you can become a coach, referee, sport journalist, manager, agent, scout and many more. The opportunity is unlimited if we never give up.