Photo courtesy 4to-sports
By Ifeanyi Ibeh
November 24, 2010 11:24PM
The Nigeria Premier League (NPL) have made known their intention to organise a championship involving the youth sides of all the teams taking part in this season’s Premier League championship.
Prior to the start of the 2010/2011 season, the NPL made it mandatory for all the 20 teams taking part in this season’s championship to register a youth team made up of players under the age of 18. Plans are now underway by the NPL to have these youth teams compete against one another in its bid to develop youth football amongst the 20 clubs taking part in this season’s top-flight. Spokesman for the NPL, Emeka Nwani, said that the move is to ensure that the feeder teams of the 20 clubs are also actively involved in playing the game rather than taking the back seat. According to Nwani, the competition will take a format that will see the various teams grouped into six zones as the NPL wants to take into cognizance the fact that a league system will be financially too demanding on the clubs.
20 teams, six zones
“The NPL will soon organise a competition for the feeder teams of the 20 clubs taking part in this season’s Premier League,” said Nwani. “Remember that the NPL told all the clubs before the start of this season to ensure that they set up their feeder teams with the age limit of players not more than 17 years. So in order to make sure that these feeder teams, or youth teams as you will like to call them, are not just there for the sake of being back-ups for the senior teams, the NPL has decided to start a competition for them very soon. The competition will be in a zonal format. This format we believe will be good for the clubs for the time being.”
Nwani further revealed that the champions of the six zones are expected to converge at a yet to be determined venue to feature in a playoff that will determine the winner of the youth cup. The NPL media man also took time to warn clubs of the grave consequence of fielding players that are older than the stipulated 17 years during the proposed competition. “The NPL will not condone a situation where clubs field players that are older than 17 years. Once we discover that, I can assure you that appropriate sanctions will be meted out to such a club or clubs,” said Nwani.
No comments:
Post a Comment
It's all about friendly conversation here at Sportsnewsnigeria.com, so do keep the comments decent and free of expletives.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and be sure to check back again because I do make every effort to reply to your comments here.