“I feel like playing football again,” that was how a former Green Eagles captain, Segun Odegbami, summarised his thoughts after an inspection tour of the Warri City Stadium, yesterday.

Also in the touring team was former Super Eagles midfielder, Mutiu Adepoju, who said that the new-look Warri stadium pitch gave him hope that Nigerian football is getting back to the days of good playing turfs.

In 2009, the city of Warri was disqualified by a visiting FIFA inspection team due to the bad pitch at the stadium. Since then, there have been several efforts by past administrations to bring Warri Stadium back to life, but the terrain ruined it until Governor Sherriff Oborevwori came to power.

Oborevwori brought in a new construction firm, Peculiar Ultimate Concern Ltd and ordered a complete renovation of the stadium. The renovation work has reached an advanced stage.

Yesterday, Odegbami, Adepoju, Executive Secretary, Nigeria Doping Centre, Mainasara Ilo and other stakeholders took a tour of the stadium, with all congratulating the contractor for a good job.

Odegbami declared: “This is the Eighth Wonder of the World, and I feel like playing football again. I have always said that the biggest problem in Nigerian football is the pitch. If you must sell as a trader, you must have a good product.

“What this contractor, Lare Adeleke, has done here in Warri City Stadium, nobody has ever done it, and I want to commend him for this good job.”

On his part, Adepoju, a member of the 1994 Super Eagles AFCON-winning squad, said: “This pitch has given me hope that our football will be great again.”

Explaining the extent of the job, the contractor, Adeleke, explained that his firm was able to achieve the result by conquering the perennial drainage issue. “Now, we have four discharge points to drain out the water. We also have six layers underneath the pitch before we laid the paspalum grass, which is the first in Nigeria. We have done the same in Lagos, and in the next few years, we will have four to five stadiums with this type of grass in Nigeria. We are installing one in Yenagoa, and the Delta State Governor has promised to do the same in Asaba.

“At the moment, Morocco, South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire and Rwanda are ahead in Africa with more modern football pitches, and our projection is to have as many as 10 stadiums with modern pitches in the next couple of years,” Adeleke stated.