The second phase of screening for the Glo Soccer Academy took off in Tamale with great anticipation and excitement as a long queue of anxious teenagers, many of them accompanied by their parents, filed into the Tamale Sports Stadium early this morning to vie for inclusion in West Africa’s biggest soccer talent hunt and reality show. Unlike in Kumasi, where lots of the candidates came to register at the screening venue, the Tamale youth had already registered via the short code 3836 and so screening took off in good time, and by 7am, over 60 teenagers had been screened. Academy officials disclosed to journalists that they found quite a number of candidates in Tamale who may have missed out on the screening in Kumasi and so have traveled to Tamale to register and be screened there. One successful candidate, 15 year old Mustapha Ibrahim, is a student of the EP Junior High School and belongs to a family full of retired professional footballers. His father, Mustapha Muller who sponsored his screening at the Academy was a celebrated forward-liner playing alongside the great Abaka Ankrah in the Hearts of Oak of the 1980s. The young boy himself has been playing football since he was five and is currently a midfielder for ‘AC Milan’ one of Tamale’s most dreaded colt sides. ‘My boy (Mustapha Ibrahim) was destined to be selected at the Glo screening today. He is very good but he has always not been so lucky in such programmes. No matter how good you may be, you still need a stroke of luck to make progress. If Allah wants my boy to rise to fame through the Glo Soccer Academy so be it,’ a delighted Muller told officials after he was informed that his son was an easy pick for the technical team. Mustapha said he aspires to be great as the Argentine Lionel Messi and also play for the Ghana Black Stars. The Northern Region, of which Tamale is capital, has charted its own history of being home to a long line of successful Ghanaian footballers among whom can be cited the legendary Baba Yara, after whom the national Stadium in Kumasi is christened, Mohamed Polo, African Footballer of the Year 1977, said to be the most technically gifted player ever to emerge from Ghana and the more contemporary local hero, Abedi Ayew Pele. The Glo Soccer Academy is screening at nine venues across three countries – Ghana, Nigeria and the Republic of Benin - at the end of which thirty-three (33) players will be shortlisted and camped for training by celebrity coaches and veteran footballers from West Africa. A technical crew from Manchester United Football Club will support the training at Academy’s training camp in Lagos. After one month of training, sixteen (16) finalists will be selected to attend a training tour of the Manchester United Soccer schools and will be awarded mouth-watering prizes which include school scholarships and cash prizes. The most valuable player (the MVP) would win the princely sum of sixty thousand Ghana Cedis (GHC60, 000) while the remaining 15 finalists would take home twelve thousand Ghana Cedis (GHC 12,000) each. Both Academy coaches and Glo officials in Tamale say they anticipate a very hectic second day of screening tomorrow, particularly since school will be out at the weekend and many more teenage boys are likely to register. After tomorrow’s screening in Tamale, Ghana’s last stop for the Glo Soccer Academy Screening team will be the Lizzy Sports Complex in Accra, where registered candidates will auditioned on Wednesday 17th and Thursday 18th October before the exercise is moved to Nigeria. To register in Ghana, prospective candidates for screening are expected to load GHC30 to their Glo line and text their name, age, and preferred screening location to 3836.