This is the news that hit the followers of the Nigerian Professional Football League (NPFL) last week: The league will go on a one-month break after the Matchday 32 fixtures this weekend to allow Rivers United FC to play all their outstanding matches. League action will resume with Matchday 33 on the weekend of 25-26 May.
So we are in the month of May, and most other leagues in Africa and Europe are rounding off the season, but it is long pause session for the game in Nigeria. This stoppage has automatically dragged the season into June and possibly the month of July.
The test, push and trials to get the Nigerian league season to run from about September to May has yet to work. This is certainly not the way to run the fixtures.
The current League Management Board had quite a number of members in the last interim board of the NPFL that ran the shortened season last year. They were hailed because they did a good job with a Final-Six Playoff at the Mobolaji Johnson Sports Centre in Lagos. However, a new board came in, and with it followed the announcement for the league's kick-off date.
The ominous sign of three postponements
The sign to the fact that the league would not end in May was the shift in the kick-off date for this season. This happened thrice, and for the superstitious followers, happening three times was a grave signal.
Now it has come to pass. The shift in the date is not the only problem, but how interested investors would interpret this kind of sudden change. The reason for the league taking a break explains a lot about how the NPFL teams are managed, and how the entire league system responds.
Being the only Nigerian team that had been left on the continental football, Rivers United had piled up on matches to play. The reason they had so many matches left was because the team got exempted from playing matches in the domestic league.
A person with full understanding of the workings of the NPFL management said they were practically arm-twisted to do so.
“They pleaded that they needed to take a break from the league to enable them concentrate on the Confederations Cup. It was called a plea, but it was more than a plea because the pressure came from all angles, and in order not to be seen as a stumbling block to Nigeria returning to being African champions again, we accepted.”
Dangers of carryover matches
That was the beginning, and of course one aspect of the challenge. The next stage of the challenge was getting Rivers United to catch up with the other 19 teams in the league.
Three options were put on the table:
- Giving Rivers United matches in-between their main schedule
- Allowing them to play their outstanding matches when others round off their regular fixtures
- Stopping the league completely so that they could use the one-month break to catch up
The third option that looked quite ludicrous was accepted.
Option 3 looks quite unbelievable to the uninitiated, but for the initiated, that was the only way left to uphold the integrity of the league. It would not make any sense for just one team to play against some teams that have already been relegated. Those relegated teams would certainly lack the interest and vigour to play any match meaningfully.
Multiple NPFL teams in CAF competitions
The question to ask now is what would have happened if Nigeria had up to two or three teams that advanced to the semi-finals of the CAF Champions League or Confederation Cup.
That may have meant having about 10 outstanding matches each of the teams involved. How long would it have taken to clear the backlog of matches? This is certainly not the way to run the fixtures of the NPFL.
From the check made by Afrik Foot, it is certain that the management of the league have learnt their lessons, and the way to handle this type of situation going forward. Otherwise, which country runs its football league like this? Check from Cape Town to Cairo, and across to Europe or South America, there is no league where 19 teams sit out to wait for one team to catch up with the fixtures.
The wait for Rivers United may have given the Nigeria football system extra room to play the Federation Cup, which is at the national knockout stage now, but that was not the original plan.
Looking unto the Premier League
If Nigeria struggled to get the league fixtures working right with just one team in the continental competition, how does the English Premier League cope?
They have three continental competitions every season for their clubs, including the Carabao Cup and the Emirates FA Cup. However, Premier League sides still finish their league in May, even ahead of the final match of the UEFA Champions League.
That is the mark of being business-minded and having a proper organization. For the EPL, apart from the quality of players and coaches involved and the kind of money available in the system, investors will naturally identify more with a system that has an uncompromising schedule.
If the NPFL had partners and sponsors who had prepared jingles and other advertisement specifically for the month of May, such items would have expired even before they hit the air waves. The Nigerian league has a lot to learn from the EPL in terms of scheduling and rescheduling games.
If we can’t arrange a schedule that is home-made, then we must understudy their system to learn how they cope when matches are moved out of force de majeure. If we are copying, let us copy very well.
I do believe that the Nigerian league management has learnt enough lessons for the future from this episode.
