New Lobi Stars head coach, Eddy Dombraye says clubs are not ready for the start of the 2021/2022 Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) due to the uncertainty of the start of the new campaign.
In an exclusive interview with The Athletic NG, Dombraye pointed to the difficult nature of the transfer market and the uncertainty surrounding the start of the new season.
Shehu Dikko, Chairman of the League Management Company (LMC) in September told Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) that the new season will commence in October and end in May 2022.
With no official statement regarding the start of the new NPFL season, Dombraye worries no team will be ready if the season commences today.
”I don’t think any team is ready for the league to start today,” Dombraye said. “Because nobody knows when the league will start for the new football season, so we don’t want to push the players too hard, it’s really bad for the coaches but we just need to focus on our preparations and be ready to go whenever the league will start.
”I still think that we are improving as a team with the number of players we have at the camp now, we brought in some younger players from the club ranks to join the first-team squad but we also brought some players, who we feel will help us to improve the team, but it’s a difficult transfer window right now with what we have on ground, we are not that bad but we are still not there yet.”
The former Flying Eagles star joined Lobi Stars in September 2021, replacing Kabir Dogo who left to join Wikki Tourists of Bauchi.
Eddy Dombraye played for Heartland and Insurance of Benin in the NPFL before leaving the shore of the country for Poland, where he played for Ekstraklasa club ŁKS Łódź in 1998. He was part of the Nigeria squad at the 1999 FIFA World Youth Championship finals. He debuted for the Super Eagles as a substitute in a 1998 African Cup of Nations qualification game against Burkina Faso.
He has already led the Makurdi side to two pre-season game victories against Galaxy FC and Plateau United as the team continues with their preparations ahead of the 2021/2022 NPFL season.
******
Copyright 2021 @ The Athletic NG. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to https://www.theathletic.com.ng/ as the source.
