In a country like Nigeria where there are abundance of talented footballers that can display their skills on the field of play to the delight of fans, Mahmud Hadejia, National cordinator of beach soccer in Nigeria has equally revealed that such skillful players also abound in beach soccer across the Federation.
Speaking exclusively to www.totorinews.com in Abuja, Hadejia, who is also the President of African Beach Soccer Union ( ABSU), said that beach soccer is progressing well in Nigeria as young Nigerians have embraced the game across the six geo-political regions.
“I think beach soccer is really progressing in Nigeria , considering where we were coming from over the years, right now you can see that Beach Soccer is being played in almost all the regions of Nigeria. We were having local competitions since last year , from Kebbi to Edo state to Anambra to Akwa-Ibom , Kaduna and a lot of states. So, we are now seeing a lot of interest from various states,” Hadejia said.
“We are trying to encourage more Nigerians to be involved. It is a very exciting sport. We also have the national league which is going into its 5th season and we are really preparing for that to have a much more improved beach soccer league,” he added.
He further said that more beach soccer league teams in Nigeria are showing strong commitment to the development of the game, adding that more teams will be encouraged to have structure to make beach soccer to continue to thrive.
“From previous seasons, we have had a couple of teams. When we were starting, we said we needed to have serious and committed teams ; the ones that have good structure and also try to encourage the ones that are just starting to start from the local level so that they can get talents from their state to come and represent at the National level.
“I think from previous seasons we’ve had like 10 teams , we are expecting it to improve and also increase this year, but we also want to get it right not just the participation.
Hadejia emphasised that beach soccer league will be taking the issue of licencing very important ahead of the new season, which will begin in April in Kebbi and they are optimistic that more beach soccer clubs will emerge in Nigeria.
“We have club licencing criteria for the beach soccer league. We have teams that followed that criteria before they joined the league, but we are encouraging a lot of teams to the right thing.
“We saw last year, we had the Jigawa Golden Star beach soccer team that participated for the first time now we are hoping to have Kano ; now we also have Anambra. we expect to have from other regions particularly from the south.
“We expect the Lagos teams to resume , we just had a discussion recently with the Chairman of the Lagos State Football Association (Hajj Gaffar) to see how we can get Lagos to resume because back in the days, everybody used to hear about Lagos you know in terms of beat soccer particularly the Copa Lagos that used to take place.
“So, we are really excited and we look forward to a very interesting and a much much more improved league for the 2025 edition,” he concluded.
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