2020/2021 NPFL Season Light Up Nigeria This Sunday

Preview of the NPFL Season, as the 2020/2021 campaign commences this Sunday with mouth Watering encounters, as season promises to be an exciting one, after the horrific previous season caused by the global pandemic…

The NPFL returns in its new season (2020/2021 campaign) after the Coronavirus pandemic abruptly stopped the League, exactly 284 days ago.

No ball has been kicked in the Nigerian top flight since March 18th, but with some teams being banished to venues they cannot truly call home, the mass masking mandate and social distancing rules, as well as the ability of teams to make up to five substitutions and the application of the new sleeve-length handball rule.

This new NPFL season is definitely set to be one we enjoyed before the outbreak of this horrific pandemic.

Although nothing good is attributable to a pandemic that has claimed the lives of millions of people worldwide, some NPFL teams would be thankful to Covid 19 whose outbreak secured their continued participation in the competition from precarious positions on the log, while others became beneficiaries of the bounty associated with continental football from outside the possibility group.

While Lobi Stars and Akwa United, whose positions were plummeted further down the standings by the use of PPG and WPG, would see Covid 19 as the curse it is, Enyimba and Rivers United, whose positions got jerked upwards, would prefer to view the pandemic as a fortunate stroke of serendipity along with Adamawa United who were only the basement team and relegation bound but were also both the league least scorers (17) and the highest conceders, with 47 goals conceded.

There were many who believed that the 2019/2020 NPFL season was not all doom and gloom, the stats back that assertion.
Before the break, a total of 494 goals were scored in 246 matches, an average of over two goals per match and the highest number of away wins (32), with a per match ratio of 0.13, meant that the 2019/2020 NPFL season was shaping up to become one of the best, if not the best, in the annals of the league football in the country.

Admittedly, Sports, let alone football, is a distant priority compared to the tackling of Covid 19, but as the Everton boss, Carlo Ancelotti, once put it, “Football is the most important of the less important things in the world”. Football stakeholders in the country, who have had to put up with life without football for yonks and who have since resorted to quenching their insatiable thirsts with football in other climes, would just be grateful for any form of the return of the NPFL.

As the season resumes this Sunday, it promises to be an intriguing league season.

The Match Day 1 fixtures and venues of the 2020/2021 NPFL season in full are:

-Akwa United Vs Dakkada Fc (Match to be played in Uyo)

-Adamawa United Vs Kano Pillars (Match to be played in Gombe)

-Enyimba Fc Vs Abia Warriors (Match to be played in Aba)

-Fc Ifeanyi Ubah Vs Lobi State (Match to be played in Nnewi, Anambra State)

-Jigawa Golden Stars Vs Sunshine Stars (Match to be played in Kaduna)

-Katsina United Vs Heartland Fc (Match to be played in Katsina)

-MFM Fc Vs Warri Wolves (Match to be played in Agege, Lagos State)

-Nasarawa United Vs Wikki Tourists (Match to be played in Lafia)

-Plateau United Vs Kwara United (Match to be played in Jos)

-Rivers United Vs Rangers Fc (Match to be played in Port Harcourt)

All matches are set to be played on Sunday and Monday, December 27th, 28th 2020.