They were made by playing small-sided games in the London cages and they haven’t forgotten their roots as Joe Aribo, and Calvin Bassey joined up with Alex Iwobi for a kickabout in London. The Rangers duo were all part of Iwobi’s Project 7 team for the event in London. Clips were shared on the Back 2 Roots Instagram page and one of them shows Kamara and Aribo linking up exactly as they have for Rangers over the years. They were also joined by Ayr United striker Tomi Adeloye and former St Johnstone player Viv Solomon-Otabor.
The event saw some top players return with Aribo and Bassey’s international teammate Alex Iwobi leading the team. The Everton winger also played alongside Glen Kamara in the Arsenal youth team and they were all happy to get involved. It wasn’t all friendly though, with one clip showing the two sets of players needing to be separated so they clearly weren’t holding back ahead of the new campaign.
Aribo, Bassey, and Kamara returned to Rangers training before leaving for Portugal for a warm-weather training camp.
The duo was involved in international duty with Nigeria after the end of the club season.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst will be hoping none of them picked up a knock during the tournament, which played a huge part in their development as kids.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Football Scotland earlier this year, Aribo’s mentor Harry Hudson spoke about how important it was for his development.
Aribo hadn’t played serious organised football until he joined the Kinetic Foundation at 16 and Hudson had said: “In truth five or six years ago there was a stigma around. Rangers could sign anyone in Europe, why would they come to a grassroots organisation? It was especially prevalent if we dropped a player in at 16 who was better than everyone in that youth team then the argument became ‘why have we bothered to invest the money in these kids from 9’.
“It was almost like admitting defeat that you’re bringing in someone from grassroots that are better than what you’ve got. We’ve had to break that stigma down and I think the other factor is the coaching process used to be ‘stop and stand still, what can you do better?’.
“For young people like Aribo, they don’t want to be stopped. They might have a 3 v 1 against them and they might dribble past them and score, you can’t turn around and tell them that’s the wrong thing. Coaching became a very autocratic process of doing what I say. That has changed.
“The whole movement of letting the game be the teacher and letting them play instead of stopping them and giving them more freedom.
“When that happened so many doors opened for players like Aribo because they like what they are offering.”