Abia Warriors Football Club of Umuahia Sporting Director Patrick Ngwaogu has opined that the post COVID-19 period will augur well for football in Nigeria and the world in general.

Ngwaogu who was a Guest in an NTA network sports program on Tuesday said that the world has come to appreciate the important role Football plays in the society. He said that he is for seeing a situation where the corporate bodies will embrace the sponsorship of football activities to launch themselves back to reckoning in global economy immediately after the Coronavirus pandemic. He advised the organizers of the game to fully prepare themselves to embrace the boost that will follow the pandemic.

The former FCT FA Vice Chairman said he is yet to come to terms on how some of the new guidelines FIFA released recently will work effectively in our local leagues “increasing the team to 23 players per match is extra logistics on the clubs, quarantining the players before match, and traveling with two buses amounts to extra cost on the teams. Teams that are not financially buoyant will find it difficult to cope. Unless, FIFA would have to review some of the rules before the game will restart here”.

He insisted that his team Abia Warriors is ever ready to resume immediately the game of football returns to Nigeria”we are very much in touch with our players. The technical crew prepare weekly training programs for the players, and we monitor them to ensure that they follow it to the latter, so that they will be fit whenever the league will resume. Not only that, we advised them to keep to all the precautionary measures outlined by the Federal Government to ensure that they are healthy and safe, because Football is only for the healthy” he concluded