Foremost stadium facility expert, Ebi Egbe, has warned that the sorry state of pitches across the country will seriously affect sports development adversely if the authorities continue to neglect them.
Egbe told reporters at the weekend that no national foreign coach would invite home-based players to the national teams as they usually play on undulating surfaces. He observed that some of these pitches are so bad that they appear as if they are not meant for football in the first place.
“Whenever I see our players play these pitches on TV, I want to cry. Nigeria is too advanced for all these things that are happening to our football. If you bring the best coaches to Nigeria to coach the national team, it’s going to be so difficult for him to pick even the highest goal scorer in the Nigeria Professional Football League because of our playing surface.
They should pass a law that if your pitch is bad and it doesn’t meet the standards, you can’t play in the NPFL. In the very important. If we want our players to excel, if we want to be at the top in marketing, Nigeria must invest in playing surfaces,” he concluded.
