State of Football in Nigeria 2017: A Country on the Verge of A Golden Football Era?

After the last three years of darkness, dimmed by Administrative and political wranglings, which led to two Nations Cup misses, and the dream team VI arriving just hours before their opening match of the Olympic Games.

Yet, we could see the signs. In 2016, Super Falcons won African Women Nations Cup and the Dream team VI, against all odds, won Olympic bronze medal...

2017 proved that Nigeria may be on the verge of a football golden era... On the field, the Super Eagles defied Group of Death odds as they cantered to 2018 World Cup qualification with relative ease. And went ahead, for the first in history, to defeat Argentine national team 4 - 2 in their recent international friendly.

Although, Fifa World ranking hasn't reflected this fact, but football fans in the country are in high spirit, believing that Super Eagles can take the world by storm at the 2018 Fifa World Cup in Russia.

Off it, NFF President Amaju Pinnick was one of the masterminds behind the democratic removal of former CAF president Issa Hayatou and was himself elected into a changed CAF Executive Committee.
Buoyed by that success, the Federation has also sucked in nearly N2 billion in sponsorship, an unprecedented figure in Nigerian sporting history.

Not only was the elite league, Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) on high at the season, but the second tier, Nigeria National League (NNL) attracted a N100 Million Sponsorship deal with 9jaBet. The success of these leagues lead to Nigeria easy qualification for African Championship (CHAN) and got to the finals of WAFU Cup.

The FA also enjoyed its fancy state with Aiteo N300 million Sponsorship deal for the next four years... which cut across both men and women federation cup competitions. By this lift, the women version of the cup was on high competitive state that attracted lot of spectators like never before.

The Nigeria women national teams, Falconets and Flamingoes succeeded in gaining more fans at the Samuel Ogbemudia stadium in Benin city...and recent the NFF president promise to make the lush grass stadium in Benin the home of women football.

On the flip side, the failure to pay the Super Falcons their allowances for winning the African title led to a public demonstration which eventually cost coach Florence Omagbemi her job. That embarrassment was compounded further as the NFF failed to either appoint a coach, or organise games for the team for the entire year.

When they did announce the appointment of Randy Waldrum, they dithered for almost two months on formalising his contract. The American lost patience and took up another job.

But the biggest blooper of all was saved for last, when administrative bungling meant nobody at the NFF picked up that Shehu Abdullahi should have served a suspension in the final World Cup qualifier against Algeria.

 FIFA subsequently awarded the game as a 3-0 win to Algeria. Although it did not cost Nigeria the World Cup place, it ended the country's run of 36 unbeaten games in World Cup qualification matches.

However, Pinnick has promised a more structured and organized NFF, to meet world standard of modern day football administration starting from 2018