It is either football federations end their 2019/2020 season by cancelling the league or they choose to end it by playing behind closed doors, so said the Confederation of African Football CAF, as they have entered into dialogues with its affiliate members on the matter.
CAF’s interim Secretary General, Abdelmounaïm Bah, in a letter signed by him, the football governing body in the continent have given up to next week Tuesday, May 05, 2020, as deadline for all its national federation affiliate members to present their plans of finalizing the current 2019/2020 season to its secretariat in Cairo, Egypt.
It was gathered that CAF has insisted on this so as to organize and plan for the inter clubs competitions next season. It has been confirmed that Angola, Liberia, Kenya and Guinea have cancelled their 2019/20 football seasons.
The Nigeria football federation are waiting for further directives from the government before taking a definitive decision on the 2019/2020 Football season and the 2020 AITEO Cup competitions.
According to Amaju Pinnick, president of the Nigeria Football Federation, resuming playing football is not as important as life and public health.
In his latest instagram chat, “So we will be having consultations with the health ministry and FIFA, and more importantly, wait for the go ahead from the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development before any sort of football will be played,” concludes the NFF Chairman.
The Nigeria Football Federation, the Sports Minister, Mr. Sunday Dare, the League Management Company and The NPFL clubs have had teleconference meeting and deliberated on how to tackle the present predicament facing the league and the covid 19 outbreak.
In the midst of the several meetings, the NFF have got the various options and will soon settle for one of them and communicate likewise to CAF, a board member told the media. “We have a fair idea of our options and possible and probable directions and we will communicate same to CAF before the May 5, 2020 deadline.”
Another NPFL club Chairman who participated in the LMC teleconference but would not want his name in print hinted that they all agreed on the four-option proposal by the LMC leadership.
“It is the wish of every body to complete the 2019/2020 NPFL season once the pandemic subsides but as things stand now, if that becomes impossible there are other options that we have all agreed to us to decide the season,” however, he didn’t say what the other options are.
