Good day!
Saturday, like every other day of the week, keeps its promise and shows up every seven days without fail. Just like rain must fall, tax must be paid, thunder must grumble before lightning flashes, and every living soul must one day answer the final call. These things are inevitable. But almost everything else in life? It can change — suddenly, dramatically, or quietly over time.
One of those ever-changing things is the form of champions. We all know the cliché, “form is temporary but class is permanent.” Nice quote. Sounds poetic. But the truth is that even class has an expiry date for most clubs. Only a handful of teams across world football maintain elite standards generation after generation. The rest? They rise, fall, rise again, then one day tumble so far down that their glory days become bedtime stories narrated by old fans with misty eyes.
Look at Nigeria’s football landscape long enough and you’ll realise we are Olympic-level excellent in one thing: inconsistency. Mighty Jets of Jos and Heartland (formerly the mighty Iwuanyanwu Nationale) are in the NNL today. Racca Rovers — yes, the same Racca Rovers that once faced a team featuring Pelé — are now just a nostalgic whisper. Leventis United, BCC Lions, Udoji United, Ocean Boys, Stationery Stores… giants in their day, but today, you’ll find many of them only in memories, photo albums, and abandoned jerseys.
Even the so-called “big sides” of the NPFL — Enyimba, Rivers United, Kano Pillars, Rangers, Remo Stars, Bendel Insurance, Shooting Stars — none are immune. Some years, the biggest achievement for a Nigerian club isn’t a title; it’s avoiding relegation by Week 35. And every so often, one of these “big teams” slides down the table like a car with bad brakes on Aba Road.
Why is this our constant reality?
For starters, the yearly demolition and rebuild ritual. One season ends, and clubs rush to sack 25 players and sign 28 new ones. Some clubs call it an improvement when they reduce the chaos to “only” 12 departures. How can there be stability when the team is rebuilt every ten months?
Then you have the mindset that a football club is a government CSR project. As long as salaries are paid occasionally and the chairman gets his monthly allocation, they call it success. Running a club like an actual business? Planning for sustainability? Creating long-term value? Those ideas are treated like forbidden vocabulary.
And what about the players? Every NPFL footballer is living a tough dilemma: stay here for peanuts or jump at the first offer from Uzbekistan, Libya, Vietnam, Malta, or the Bangladesh third division. Who can blame them? If you were earning crumbs while risking injury on terrible pitches, you would take the flight too.Now, this weekend was supposed to be a blockbuster — defending champions Remo Stars vs. record champions Enyimba. On paper, this is the kind of fixture that should shake the league. But based purely on recent performances, it is starting to feel like just another NPFL matchday. The shine is not shining the way it used to.
We’ll be back tomorrow with the match preview.
EnyimbaEnyi 💙
