League cannot progress in error - Irabor Chairman of the board of the League Management Company, LMC, Hon. Nduka Irabor, has declared that it will be self delusory to expect a vibrant and commercially viable professional football league with fundamentally flawed organisation and disregard for globally established standards. It is for this reason that the LMC is dispassionately enforcing compliance with the regulations establishing the Nigeria professional football league and the minimum standards of professional club football as recommended by the Federation of International Football Associations, FIFA, as adopted by the Confederation of African Football, CAF, and the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF. Irabor made the declaration Wednesday at a media chat with sports journalists in Lagos as part of activities to herald the opening of the 2013/2014 league season scheduled for this weekend. According to him, with long disregard and non-compliance with the rules of professional club football there was no basis in describing the Nigerian elite football league as ‘professional’. “We can say there was no professional league in the first place because the basic requirements were not met by the clubs. They kept pushing the issue while the standard kept going down. We are therefore starting from the scratch, building from bottom up to ensure commercially viable clubs with financial stability to attain minimum industry standards and develop from there. There is a big picture but this cannot be achieved in one season, it will take some years and we ask for patience and firm resolve from all concerned to ensure the success of the process. We are tired of hearing about clubs that cannot pay their players regularly because the clubs are not being run as businesses. We have had a mere average of 2,500 match attendance last season. That is not encouraging. The club managers need to understand that it is their responsibility to bring spectators to their matches as their first line of revenue. There are several ways in which they can achieve that. There are various other commercial opportunities. They need to exploit all these. That is why we are enforcing the financial performance guarantee system. Otherwise, what is the point in being called professional when in reality the clubs are not structured and being run as such?” As part of the reform process, Irabor reiterated the need for state governments to divest their holding in the clubs by thirty percent to give room for investors. “Our target in the next two years is to see the state government divest by at least 50 per cent. With this there will be room for investors to come. The clubs can also go public and interestingly, we are having preliminary discussions with the stock exchange and it has shown enthusiasm in working with the clubs.” On the direction of the reforms, Irabor informed that the LMC dreams of the league as “an issue of social discourse” not only on media and communication platforms as currently being enjoyed by some other leagues but as a daily subject in public and family conversations while also ensuring that the match venues are friendly for spectators. “Security at the stadium is for everybody involved in the game. That includes the players, spectators, referees, medics and everybody at the stadium. There is no exception.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 11:31:28 +0000
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