The Interim Management Committee (IMC) members have their jobs cut for them to rejuvenate the domestic game which has been lying prostrate by those who organised the leagues in the country. Indeed, whatever it was that touched the hearts of members of the now discredited Club Owners during their meeting with the NFF President to confess their sins including saying that the league in the past was for the highest bidder is clearly a case of match-fixing. There can’t be a better way to couch it. It is a disgraceful act.
This shameful confession hasn’t been contradicted nor has anyone of them come out to say it was a misinterpretation of what was discussed on that ill-fated day. Therefore, the IMC should as a matter of urgency ensure that the Club Owners body is banished from the game, although we have been told that the contraption called Club Owners isn’t known to the recognisable laws of the game here. This group of people are appointees who exploited the disorganised structures in the domestic game to lord their wishes on others to the detriment of the game’s growth. They were # monsters who went unchallenged. They were instigators of all riots at match venues and the pummelling of centre referees who didn’t do their biddings.
Ultimately, it means that previous winners of the league title were cheats and rode on the back of the corruption system to emerge. No wonder they have crashed as the pack of cards. The law of retributive justice, as some would rather say caught up with past winners at the continental levels. So, if the recently inaugurated Interim Management Committee is to be taken seriously, the self-discredited Club Owners based on their confessions should be scrapped.
For us to know where we are headed, we need to evaluate where we are coming from such that we can trash the wastes we have carried along. The club owners should provide evidence of the instances where they influenced match referees and also expose the bank details into which such illicit cash was paid. Such discredited referees should be delisted from those match officials for the new season. For instance, the referees’ appointment committee should be disbanded and no member of the previous board should get any role in the league’s organisation, going forward. Is there anything that the referees’ committee is guilty of that can’t find such dubious expression in the way the match commissioners’ appointment body ran their show? Shame!
We cannot allow this type of self-indicting statement to go unpunished yet we expect the corporate businesses to do sports business with the league. No way! Sponsorship will continue to be an illusion in the domestic game without a soul-searching effort to remove the vices of the game beginning with the administrators, most of whom have overstayed their welcome. With such languid officials, there can’t be any form of business orientation among the clubs since the administrators are used to waiting for government subventions to run the clubs. Need I say that these so-called club owners know that government cash is free and oftentimes not accounted for? The subvention for most government clubs is regarded as public relations, whatever that means.
Most state governors would be shocked by the disclosures if they insist that their appointees who run the clubs give an account of all that they earned by way of inter and intra-club transfers of their players in the last six years. One of the state governors was shocked to hear that most of the players are his team are on loan with no record of who the real owners are and when such transactions were held. The governor was miffed to hear that the owners of the players were in the academies and youth clubs whereas the rules forbid such transactions.
No academy player or youth club player can be transferred to any professional club for a fee. Rather such a boy’s academy or youth club would be entitled to developmental fees. Indeed, FIFA frowns at third-party transfers. Transfers start with the intending new club’s managers discussing with the owners of the player. It is at such meetings that fees are tabled and agreements are reached, including contract inserts where the club where the player is leaving is entitled to a certain percentage if in the period of the new contract such a player moves to a bigger club. For instance, from Warri Wolves to Bendel Insurance FC of Benin City and then from Insurance to Liverpool. This isn’t real. Just hypothetical.
The hoax in the domestic league clubs as it concerns players’ purchases is colossal only if the governors dare to ask. Those mouthing the argument that clubs can be solvent without the government spending money should ask those who administer government clubs how much they get from players’ transfers yearly. How can a club in Nigeria sell a player for almost $750,00 dollars or there about in Europe? What the club gets is a paltry sum ($7,500). They claimed that the player belongs to an academy. A player who plays for the Super Eagles for that matter. These things must stop to enhance the earnings of our clubs.
Rule B9.32 of the Framework and Rules of the Nigeria Professional Football League out rightly prohibits this practice by providing that;“No Club of the League shall enter into a Loan or Temporary Transfer agreement (as the Transferee Club) with an amateur club, a football academy, an individual or any entity other than a professional football club (i.e. a club in the Nigeria Professional Football League or the Nigeria National League).”
This practice, in addition to being illegal, contributes to capital flight from the Nigeria Professional Football League by ensuring that clubs are denied their due reward for developing professional footballers, as they are excluded from benefiting from any future transfer of the player(s) involved under this illegal arrangement.
The global football ecosystem has a reward system that favours clubs at every level. Thus, while professional clubs benefit from transfer fees, academies and amateur clubs benefit from training compensation and solidarity mechanisms. However, this disruptive practice only serves to disrupt the system by robbing professional clubs of their due. The time to chase out the fixers of our domestic league is now.
Transfers in the Premier League were £2.01 billion pounds with the statement made public stating by way of comparison what each club spent last year against what each club spent this year. The statement further provided information on the number of players in each club involved in the transfer transactions. Again, a graphic picture was provided showing what each club received from television rights for instance and all the other forms of making money in a truly professional football setup. You will marvel at what the last team on the log last season got at the end of the permutations. Relegated Norwich City got as much as over £100 million pounds with the defending champions of the Premier League Manchester City getting £153,090,894 pounds.
Those people running their mouths that our clubs can be administered properly without government funding should those there know how much they realise from their gate-takings? The people have forgotten the mayhem associated with the poor results of such teams. I will support Dangote and Adenuga for instance, not funding any Nigerian team because of the wanton destruction associated with any poor result. Look at what the irate fans did to the rejuvenated MKO Abiola Stadium, Abuja simply because Nigeria failed to qualify for the Qatar 2022 World Cup. Imagine, if it was a Nigerian businessman who owned the Super Eagles and what it would take him to fix the stadium in these hard times of imminent recession.
The truth is that if the governors know that they are entitled to some cash from these monetary movements in club football, these administrators would sit up. If state governors can find the political will to demand from their administrators the number of players the club sold to others in Europe, Africa, the Americas and the Diaspora, and within the country, a new dawn would be ushered into how the game is organised.