In 2024, Issa Jamiu Olarewaju flew to France for a trial at Stade de Reims and came home without a contract. He could have let that define him. Instead, he went back to the Nigeria National League, rebuilt his confidence game by game, and recently stood in a photograph alongside the man whose own journey from grassroots football to the Premier League had always been his north star.
The photograph tells the story without needing a caption. Jigawa Golden Stars midfielder Issa Jamiu Olarewaju, jersey in hand, standing next to Taiwo Awoniyi during the Nottingham Forest striker’s visit to Unicorns FC in Kwara State. Two footballers at very different points in their careers, one having scored the goal that kept Nottingham Forest in the Premier League, the other still fighting through the Nigeria National League for his chance but connected by the same academy, the same values, and the same stubborn belief that the football dream is worth chasing no matter how many times the door gets closed in your face.
Issa is a product of Unicorns FC, the academy founded and owned by Awoniyi himself. The Super Eagles striker established the club as part of his commitment to developing talent in Kwara State, creating a pathway for young players from the region to receive structured coaching and the kind of environment that gives raw ability somewhere to grow. For players like Issa, coming through that system means something beyond football, it means being part of a community built around the idea that Nigerian grassroots talent matters and deserves proper investment. Fans of Nigerian football who want to follow the journeys of players like Issa as they work their way up through the domestic pyramid can check the Bet9ja promo code for NNL and NPFL coverage throughout the season.
The Trial That Did Not Work Out
In 2024, Issa packed his bags and flew to France. Stade de Reims had agreed to assess him a Ligue 1 club, one of the more respected development programmes in French football, with a history of producing technically accomplished players. For any young Nigerian midfielder to earn that kind of opportunity speaks to the impression he had been making at Unicorns FC. The trial, however, did not end in a contract. The exact reasons are not publicly known, and rejection from a European trial can come from any number of factors tactical fit, timing, registration rules, or simply the brutal mathematics of a club that can only sign a small number of prospects at any given moment.
What matters is what Issa did next. He came home. He returned to Nigeria National League football with Jigawa Golden Stars. And he did not collapse. Throughout the 2025/26 NNL season, the midfielder has been one of his club’s most consistent performers described by those who have watched him regularly as a player with energy, creativity and genuine midfield intelligence. The failed Reims trial, rather than breaking him, seems to have given him a sharper sense of what he is working toward and why. Players following a similar pathrebuilding in the domestic league after setbacks abroad can find their form tracked and bet on via the YOHAIG Bet9ja welcome code for new account holders following NNL football.
The Meeting and What It Meant
When Awoniyi visited Unicorns FC, Issa was there. And in the photographs from that visit, the moment of the jersey presentation carries a weight that goes beyond fan worship. This is one of the academy’s own alumni, a player who went through the same system, meeting the man who built it and whose career represents proof that the journey from a Kwara State academy to European professional football is not just a dream it is a route that has already been walked.
Awoniyi’s own story is the kind that Nigerian footballers in the lower leagues need to hear told and retold. He was at Liverpool for six years without making a single first team appearance loaned out eight times to eight different clubs, developing quietly across Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and France before finally earning a permanent move to Union Berlin and then to Nottingham Forest, where he scored the goal that kept the club in the Premier League and cemented his place in the city’s sporting history. The path was not straight. The setbacks were real and repeated. But it led somewhere. For Issa, watching that journey from inside the academy that bears Awoniyi’s indirect stamp, the message is personal in a way that no motivational speech from a coach could replicate. Nigerian football fans supporting both the established stars and the next generation coming through can register on the Bet9ja platform to follow domestic football throughout the new season.
What the NNL Means Right Now
It is worth being honest about where Issa Jamiu is in his career. The Nigeria National League is the second tier of Nigerian football, one step below the NPFL. It is competitive, it is physical, and it produces players who go on to the top flight but it is also a long way from Stade de Reims or any other Ligue 1 outfit. The gap between where he is and where he wants to be is real and should not be romanticised away. But the NNL is also where several players who eventually reached European football spent formative seasons, and Issa’s form this year suggests he is using the environment well rather than simply waiting for a second chance to arrive.
His next move whether that is a promotion challenge with Jigawa, a transfer to an NPFL club, or another trial abroad will depend on the 2026/27 season and what he does with it. The France rejection in 2024 was not a verdict on his ability. It was an outcome at a particular moment in time. Issa Jamiu Olarewaju is 20 something, playing well in Nigeria’s second division, and carrying the backing of an academy system that has already produced a player good enough for the Premier League. The photograph with Awoniyi is not the destination. It is a reminder of the direction.
📌 Did You Know?
- Unicorns FC, the academy Issa Jamiu Olarewaju came through, was founded by Super Eagles striker Taiwo Awoniyi as part of his commitment to grassroots football development in Kwara State, where he himself grew up before beginning his professional career.
- Taiwo Awoniyi spent six years in Liverpool’s academy system between 2015 and 2021 without making a single first-team appearance for the club, due to work permit restrictions. He was loaned to eight different clubs during that period across Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and France.
- Stade de Reims, where Issa Jamiu had his 2024 trial, are one of France’s historically significant clubs — they reached the European Cup final in 1956 and 1959 and have built a reputation in recent decades for developing technically gifted attacking players through their academy.
- The Nigeria National League (NNL) is the second tier of Nigerian football, sitting directly below the NPFL. Promotion from the NNL to the NPFL requires finishing among the top teams in a club’s conference and succeeding in the promotion playoff.
- Awoniyi scored the goal that kept Nottingham Forest in the Premier League on the final day of the 2022/23 season a header against Arsenal at the City Ground that secured a 1-0 win and preserved the club’s top flight status by a single point.
- Jigawa Golden Stars, the club where Issa currently plays, are based in Dutse, the capital of Jigawa State in northwestern Nigeria, and compete in the Nigeria National League’s northern conference.
- Several Nigerian players who eventually signed professional contracts in Europe including some who went on to represent the Super Eagles spent time in the NNL or lower-tier Nigerian football before earning their European breakthrough, making Issa’s continued development at this level a realistic platform rather than a dead end.
