Nigerian 6 a side On The Up

Small sided football in Nigeria has been undergoing one of its busiest periods, with a couple of tournaments reaching their conclusion in the last couple of weeks.

The 61^st year of the country’s independence from Britain was marked with a one-day 6-aside Socca competition with 8 teams including a new look Team Nigeria (Socca Naija).

There were some excellent games, but the Mandarins side emerged as victorious.

 In addition to that the Corporate Socca League reached its semi-final stage. The pick of the games saw the match was between Dreams FC and Polar FC and ended 2-2 in normal time. Polar FC win the resultant penalties in “sudden death.”

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”29″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″]Head of the Nigerian federation, Henry Koko was delighted with the progression of the sport in his country and added: “The leagues have been going well with interest continuing to grow for our Socca events in general.

“We have hosted several league seasons & competitions, for youth and corporate teams, across 3 main cities, Ilorin, Lagos and Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, and plan to kick off leagues in 2 new cities before the end of this year.”

As always, though, with the proud African nations, there is one eye on the world stage, as an excited Henry explained: “We are also getting ready a new team Nigeria squad (called Socca Naija more frequently these days) for the upcoming World Cup; recruiting players from the leagues.” He hopes their hard work will pay off with a run in the competition: “We are really looking forward to Cozumel 2022, for the wonderful experiences and hopefully we can make a better impression than we did in 2019.”