Kicks Against Privatisation of Clubs
Segun Odegbami, former Super Eagles captain, said on Sunday that lack of funds was making it difficult for clubs to successfully prosecute the Nigeria Professional Football League matches, adding that the problem was making it difficult for them to honour matches.
Despite the poor financial state of these clubs, he kicked against privatising these clubs on the premise that such an exercise would lead to the death of the clubs.
Privatisation, he said, would fail because no private organisation was willing to own club and not any could successfully manage a football club.
He said that the reason why clubs would fail was that sports to a great extent was viewed as recreation rather than being a purely business enterprise.
He also took swipe at the clubs which owed players for months saying that owing players was detrimental to the development of the game.
According to him, since most of the clubs were owned by the state governors, who cannot meet their financial obligation to their workers, certainly they would owe the players.
He called for greater attention to the generation of income to enable the clubs to operate.
He, however, gave a pat saying that coverage and officiating of the League (NPFL) was improving, calling on club owners, managers and sport administrators to sustain the improvements so that the nation’s football would be strengthened