The Minister of Sports, Sunday Dare, at the weekend declared that the revived National Principals Cup has come to stay this time to boost the development of football in Nigeria.
The competition is a developmental grassroots event for all secondary schools in the country.
Dare was speaking at the kick-off ceremony of the Principals Cup on Friday at the Agege Stadium, Lagos.
The minister said: “I am so elated that a competition like this which engages our youths and prepares them for the future is back.
“When you look at at the likes of Segun Odegbami, Felix Owolabi, Daniel Amokachi, Adokie Amesimaka, Stephen Keshi, Dosu Joseph, Henry Nwosu, Victor Ikpeba and a whole lot of others who took part in this event, one will realize the magnitude of this big revival.
“I want to assure everyone that this competition will outlive all of us and will not go down again. It will be a brand with sponsors in place so that it will be sustained in many years to come.
“It is important to use this event to boost the age grade national teams and to give the young ones a chance to attain their full potential.”
Deputy Governor of Edo State, Philip Shuaibu, Minister of State for Education, Emeka Nwajuba, the first and second Vice Presidents of the Nigeria Football Federation – Seyi Akinwunmi and Shehu Dikko – were at the event.
The match itself between Igbobi College, Lagos and Government College Kaduna ended 1-1 with state preliminaries expected to start immediately nationwide.
Dare also enjoined the participants of the competition to combine education effectively with sports.
“Today, Adokiye is a Justice, Odegbami an engineer, Owolabi, a PHD holder and a host lot of others. Football did not affect their education,” Dare added.
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COMMENTS
The Wazzer Dazzler is now dazzling in an administrative capacity. This is where we expect him to dazzle, not in SE training. The Prinicipal’s Cup was a huge platform for talent discovery back in the day. It’s good to see it being revived. Next item on the agenda – revive our local league! We want to go back to the days of IICC shooting stars, Rangers International, Stationery Stores, Leventis United, Abiola Babes, Iwuayanwu Nationale, NNB Benin, Flash Flamengoes, Bendel Insurance, BCC Lions of Gboko, Kano Pillars, El Kanemi, Mighty Jets….the days when the Nigeria league was as good as, if not better than the English league! The Nigerian el classico used to be IICC vs Rangers, then it became Leventis United vs Abiola Babes. Real Madrid vs Barcelona nor reach! Let’s get our local league back to the glory days. Monetise it, and it will fund the NFF well. It will also be a great source of feeder talent to our national teams.
You couldn’t have said this better @pompei. Thumbs up
Thumbs up @pompei. Great walk down memory lane. Brings some nostalgia. I think you missed out Ranchers Bees of Kaduna (Seems Westerhof discovered Anokachi here), Sharks of Port Harcourt,Calabar Rovers and maybe Julius Berger and First Bank. Some of the greatest talents in the then Green Eagles were here, not jumping on the first opportunity to go play “professional football” in just about any country outside the nation’s shore. And what happened to Shell’s Cup? SMH.
Indeed, I should have included those clubs! Including ACB of Lagos (Henry Nwosu was their for a while), Eagle Cement of Port Harcourt, and a few others.
Great work Pompei. I do hope the NPFL can be an attractive league to watch, play in and brag about again. Hopefully the “mantle of attractiveness” shall be restored back to the league soon enough. It has stayed far longer than expected at the dry cleaners….
The truth is back in the day the European league wasn’t as huge as it’s today.It hasn’t more coverage globally as it is today.Only the few rich could afford to see European games on weekly basis,technology wasnt as great as it’s today.
The fact still remains the finest footballers in the world ply there trade in Europe unlike before where the likes of Pele play for Santos and our own Segun Odegbami was a star at IICC of Ibadan the list goes on,but today the best are all headed to Europe and people wants to see the best play.This includes Nigeria’s Finest who are also based in Europe.So you can imagine Everton versus Fulham as against MFM v Rangers which one of these two games would get the better attention by football fans?its just obvious.
However,It’s good to improve our league to the best standards out there.Hopefully that could help to keep some of our best local talents.
I know there are ardent fans of our domestic league,notwithstanding would still go out to support there teams and hopefully more fans will follow suit but the truth still remains,the European league having the finest talents in the world would still get the most attention by majority of the Nigerian football fans.
Agreed, the best players are attracted to the best leagues, which are mainly in Europe nowadays. However, our league can still be competitive. That’s where marketing and packaging comes in. Get quality TV coverage and match commentaries (we can follow the English example of using commentaries to attract interest, with impressive club and player stats), standardize the pitches (high quality pitches and stadia add to a great atmosphere), get corporate sponsorship, make the league more lucrative to raise the stakes and increase competition, etc.
Look at the Chinese, Japanese, even SA leagues. The best players in the world are not there, yet their league games are very competitive, highly entertaining and fun to watch. It’s all about packaging and marketing. If we get it right, eventually the big names will be attracted to our leagues and they will come. That’s what happened in England.
Thanks friends!
As Deo mentioned, we need to get that “mantle of attractiveness” back from the drycleaners asap. It’s been too long.