Owolabi suggests abridged league for 2022/23 NPFL season

Owolabi suggests abridged league for 2022/23 NPFL season
Former international, Felix Owolabi, has proposed an abridged league for the 2022/23 Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) season to help the country harmonise its calendar with the rest of Africa.

Speaking ahead of today’s meeting between the NPFL clubs and the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the league, Owolabi told The Guardian that the IMC must find a way of reducing the number of matches for the new season to ensure Nigerian teams are ready when the 2023/24 CAF inter-club competitions begin.

“As it stands, there is no way clubs from Nigeria can match their counterparts from other countries in Africa. Our league is about five to six months behind the rest of Africa and this is the reason we have to compress the new season for our clubs to be in season when the next CAF club competitions start.

“Every time we keep blaming our clubs for failing in the continent when in actual fact our league being perpetually on recession does not help the clubs.

“To avoid that, we have to device a temporary means of ensuring that the top six clubs from each zone will be made to compete for the CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup slots. And at the end of the abridged league, we can now return to the normal league format,” he said.