Nigeria Content Online

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.