The Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) board will be under pressure to meet the deadline set by Africa’s football governing body, the Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) for the submission of the clubs that have qualified for the 2024-2025 CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup.
According to the deadline, it is expected that all the football leagues across Africa, which includes the NPFL, will submit their representatives for the two continental club competitions on or before June 15, 2024.
This directive from the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, means that all the leagues on the continent must round up their respective 2023-2024 league season before the said date as the preliminary round of the Champions League and Conference League will commence in August 2024.
With the deadline, the NPFL will be under pressure to conclude the 2023-2024 season as the league resumes this weekend after over three weeks break. It will be recalled that the NPFL had to take a break to give room for Rivers United to play their numerous outstanding games.
It will be noted that The NPFL organisers recently revealed the dates for the remaining games of the season, which is scheduled to conclude on June 23 with Matchday 38 fixtures.
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All the clubs have now played 32 games each, which means that they all have six games each left to play before the season ends.
From the amended fixtures MatchDay 33 fixtures come up this weekend while MatchDay 34 fixtures will hold on June 2nd. MatchDay 35 fixtures hold June 9th while MatchDays 36, 37 and 38 come up on June 12th, 16th and 23rd in that order.
In an exclusive chat with Davidson Owumi, the NPFL’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), who said the board will look at some indices available at each point of the league to meet the deadline.
“As you may be aware, most leagues in Africa will end towards the end of June. Again, be as it may, we have one week interval from the deadline and when our league will end. There are some indices we will look at. If we can predict who will represent us from week 37 when we see how the table turns out and this depends on the points difference. If that is not possible, we will send Nigeria 1, Nigeria 2, Nigeria 3 just as other leagues will do. Also, we can arrange mid-week games to also meet up. However, the worst that may happen is to pay a fine,” he stated.
It will be noted that the winner of this season’s NPFL campaign and the second-runner-up will represent Nigeria in the CAF Champions League. The side that finishes third and the side that wins the Federation Cup will represent the country at the CAF Confederation Cup.
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