August 09, (THEWILL) – In an effort to grow football in Nigeria, the organisers of the 2022 Merrybet 5Stars Premier League have anchored the competition in Lagos.
In a press conference over the weekend, Seyi Akinwummi, the first vice president of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), who was represented by Dotun Coker, the Technical Director of the Lagos Football Association, remarked that talents found would be invited to join the state’s teams prior to national competitions.
He said: “We are going to see more talents in Lagos and we have seen faces that are affiliated with them. Definitely we deploy our coaches to hunt for talents and they know what to do with them. So this season, we have the U-15 national youth games coming up, the national sports festival, we will invite the talents discovered to the state teams.”
The League’s manager, Olumide Oturu, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of 5 Star Consultancy, reiterated at the event that the league aims to advance football in Nigeria, noting that “this is the opportunity to harness the talents and help improve the structure of our football in Nigeria. If we have talents from the grassroots, it helps to develop the other tiers of football like the NLO, NNL and NPFL, in the long run and spark a whole of development.”
The league would include 20 teams split into two conferences—Mainland and Island—with the top four teams from each conference competing in the knockout round for the chance to play 12 Strong FC of Abuja, the Northern region’s champions, on October 1, Independence Day, in Ibadan.
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Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
