By KATE OBODO
Coach of Enyimba Football Club of Aba, Okey Emordi has expressed sadness over the consistent shifting of the League and the on-going Federation Cup matches which he said is unprofessional for a long-established league.

The 2004 CAF Champions League winning coach said up till now the 2010/2011 session of the NPL has not ended, adding that the league is supposed to have a fixed date as to when it will start and end.

He stressed on the need for a football calender as it will help to guide the way the league is supposed to be run. He however urged the NFF and NPL to learn from their foreign counterparts how they organise their own league programmes.

“Have you seen the way the Federation Cup is going on ? In some zones, matches were not played while in some others, they were postponed for one reason or the other. It shows that the competition has lost its beauty.

The reason is that we do not have any football calender for a competition like this. This speaks volume of the kind of organization we have. For the league, we have been playing from year to year without any break which is not good for the game.

And under normal circumstance, we are supposed to have come to the end of the 2010/2011 season. With the look of things, it appears as if the league is not coming to an end and the FA Cup is not going on properly, he complained.

Continuing, Emordi said, “People are no more interested in watching our local league games, they prefer European games. Unless we have good organisers and a good sponsor, there is no way things will be better. It is very important that we have a football calender in the country, in order to know when the league starts and ends.

With the way things are going in the country, we do not know when it is going to end, because there is a lot of postponements. It goes to show the kind of people we have running the game. When you are not organised the teams will equally not be organised.

I will like a situation where we imitate or learn from our colleagues outside the shores of this country for instance South Africa. We could learn from the Europeans, imitate the way they organise their leagues so that our sports men can rest and the coaches can equally rest.”