•Declares financial surplus of N483m for 2016
•Endorses proposed Club Merchandising Scheme
Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) clubs will from the coming season raise youth teams for players aged 15 years and below to compete in the new NPFL Youth League. This is even as the League Management Company (LMC) declared a surplus/savings of N483 million in its operations for the 2015/16 Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) season.
This was contained in the financial report submitted by the Chairman of the LMC, Shehu Dikko and accepted with commendations at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the LMC held in Enugu on Sunday, December 11.
Other high points of the AGM resolution include the approval of the LMC proposal for a Youth League tournament in partnership with LaLiga that all clubs will participate in, the endorsement of a new bonus/incentives structure as proposed by the LMC, approval of the club merchandising proposal by the LMC to deploy part of the clubs’ revenue from source for payment of clubs’ jersey replicas and the election of clubs’ representatives to serve on the LMC Board.
In one of its 22 points resolutions, the AGM made up of the 20 NPFL Clubs, the Nigeria Football Federation and LMC Independent Directors, noted that it received a detailed presentation of the LMC income and expenditure report from the 2015/16 season which was approved at the 2nd AGM in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State in February, 2016. It went further to state, “the outline of expenditure report shows actual income receipts for 2016 of N2.831 million as against the N2.112 million expected guaranteed revenues and N4.817 million projected gross revenue while actual expenditure budget for year 2016 stood at N2.347 million as against budgeted expenditure of N3.260 million for the season. The financials for 2016 season therefore show a surplus/savings of N483million which has been carried over to form part of the revenues for the 2016/17 to facilitate early commencement of the season.”
On the Youth League, the AGM resolution noted, “The meeting approved LMC proposal to start a Youth League Competition for U-15 among NPFL participating clubs in association with LaLiga in furtherance of the partnership agreement between the two leagues. The league would be fashioned after the ‘LaLiga Promisas’ with Laliga serving as technical partners.”
Clubs are expected to employ young coaches for the Youth teams and in line with the collaboration with Laliga, the Spanish league will provide Technical assistance by sending coaches who will train the Youth team coaches before the start of the league.
The new bonus/incentive structure will see clubs earn N500, 000 for an away win, N200, 000 for an away draw and N250, 000 for attracting over 5000 fans to watch home games. There is also a N200, 000 monthly stadium maintenance support and N100, 000 for dressing three Youth players (U-18) in a Matchday squad with one of the players having a play time of 15 minutes while N200, 000 will be paid to a club that fielded such youth players with one playing for 45 minutes on a Matchday.
“The meeting approved with enthusiasm, the club merchandising proposal by the LMC Board to pay part of the funds due to clubs in kind through the supply of clubs official replica jerseys. The clubs are to sell the replicas to fans recoup the money and also drive passion in club supporters. The meeting noted this scheme would jumpstart and open club merchandising market and create new revenue streams for the clubs”.
The newly elected Directors to represent the clubs on the LMC Board are Paul Bassey of Akwa United, Chief Emeka Inyama of Abia Warriors, Mike Idoko of Lobi Stars, Emmanuel Aiyeyun of MFM, Alhaji Danarewa Kurfi of Katsina United and Alhaji Isa Musa Matori of Wikki Tourists. Their election is in line with article 13 and 14 of the LMC Governance structure.

for those who will want to know how the kids will combine school with football, I asked the direct question too to the LMC and the chairman himself in the person of mallam shehu dikko answered it.
Question : SIR ABOUT THE U15 LEAGUE ,I DON'T KNOW HOW THE LMC WILL PLAN IT BECAUSE THESE LADS SHOULD STILL BE IN SCHOOL ,HOW WILL THEY TRAVEL LONG DISTANCES TO PLAY LEAGUE MATCHES
MALLAM SHEHU DIKKO :On the U15 Youth League as you know we are working with LaLiga to put it together and the overall objective is to get the clubs to jumpstart their Youth Programs.

Indeed, we have taking note of the School calendar and thus the project is PRELIMINARY planned subject to further amendments to take place on this format.

1. The 20 clubs have been devided into 4 groups.

2. Each club would be required to form an U15 team principally comprising of kids within their catchments area.

3. Each team would be required to appoint an U15 coaches by Jan/Feb 2017. Our advise here is for clubs to appoint much younger coaches to head this department for obvious reasons so we can also use this to build a new generation of coaches.

4. LaLiga would send in experts by Feb/march 2017 to train this U15 coaches on specific of youth players coaching, scouting and Management. You know this is also a speciality field.

5. By march 2017 clubs would have had their teams set up with trained coaches managing them and indeed having their trainings and preparations.

6. By April 2017, when the schools would have been on holidays, the league competition will take place with each of the 4 groups of the clubs converging at a neutral venue to play a round robin league and the top two from each group goes to the quarter final, then we play the semi finals and the finals to have winners. We can all actualized this within one month. We can also structure the quarter finals, semi finals and finals to be opening matches for some of the top league matches and some might be on TV.

7. During the tournament LaLiga would send out scouts to Look at the boys and also assist the club coaches technically. We believe also our U17 coaches and also the clubs scouts would be looking.

8. At the end an Allstar Team of the U15 will be selected across all the clubs and would LIKELY in the summer be taking to Spain to play in the LaLiga PROMISAS tournament comprising the U15 teams of all the top clubs in Spain among other clubs invited globally.

9. With this done and the possibilities we would be jumpstarting our NPFL youth league and by next season we would see how to increase the number of games and there would be incentive for each club player selected to the U15 Allstar and also for each player that made his club main team within say 2 years.

10. BUT NOTE this structure is the preliminary structure being envisaged and is subject to further amendments based in exigencies of of the situation. So any suggestions can be welcome

11. We have already approached some corporates that are engaging in organizing youth football tournaments to see if they can redirects and situate their sponsorships within this NPFL Youth League structure.

Never implemented