Identifying football talents from the grassroots has become a challenging task in the last five to ten years as compared to years before.

While Colts football, especially in Africa, has been the source of many football players going to become stars, such opportunities come no more.

Talk of the Michale Essiens, Sulley Munatris, Asamoah Gyan and a whole lot of stars that have come through the ranks on the path of Ghana, talents as such cannot be easily identified now.

However, the African continent could soon be heading back to those years, through Nordensa - an initiative that aims to discover talent from the grassroots level and pave a career for them in Europe.

What is Nordensa all about?

The idea of Nordensa first commenced in September 2022 however, the app was launched last summer in June and has since partnered with over 16 football clubs.

In 2023, Nordensa made history by signing the world’s first-ever fan-backed footballer to a European club in Cameroon's Joseph Iyendjock.

In an exclusive interview with Joy Sports, Adrian Docea, founder of Nordensa explained the whole idea behind setting up the platform.

"The new thing about Nordensa is that football fans can help young talented football players get noticed by football clubs in Europe and Nordensa is providing this connection between fans and talent," he said.

"When the young football players get noticed and get signed by European clubs and start being a professional career in Europe, the who supported the player would get rewards for believing in the player."

The platform allows fans to be able to recommend players to be watched by scouts from Nordensa and get listed on their platform with the aim of securing a club for them.

At the moment, more of the talent identification is being done by the international team at Nordensa through watching the games that matter as well as data-driven statistics.

Getting onto the African scene

The difficulty in getting live games from the African continent to watch means scouts would need to come down in order to spot talents. For instance, in Ghana, the Division One and Two Leagues are very difficult to get access to.

Considering the fact the lower leagues other than the Ghana Premier League have contributed to moving players out of the country more, it is a worry having footage unavailable for some of these low-profile games.

However, for the people at Nordensa, there is a solution to this problem and it comes at no cost at all for the clubs involved.

"What we are doing right now is partnering with academies and clubs across the world, specifically in Africa, so that we can install scouting cameras or help them do that by themselves," Adrian added.

"The best way to get access to data is to start installing equipment so that we can monitor…If I could send a message to clubs and academies in Ghana, I would ask them to get in touch with Nordensa. The best way to work together is to sign a partnership, get some scouting cameras installed and we will do our best to spot talents, list them and get fans to support them financially and present them to football clubs in Europe."

On whether the clubs would have to bear any cost, he added, "That's the beauty of it. We don't make money on clubs or academies at all.

"Because of the nature of our business, Nordensa will only make money from subscriptions, from fans. When we work with an academy or a club in Africa, everything we provide is for free."

While the platform is looking to work with academies and clubs, individuals who find themselves in none of these places would need to reach out to Nordensa directly.

All they would have to do it to submit links to their full games to help the team make a decision.

"For this specific situation, my colleagues will need to receive some YouTube links to full games," he mentioned.

The idea of Nordensa is to help as many talented footballers as possible and by doing that, building a network with Ghanaian clubs and academies is vital to any future success.

Clubs and academies interested in a partnership with Nordensa can contact champions@nordensa.com.