By Samuel Bamisebi
After over a year of been stopped due to crisis in the league and then the Covid-19 pandemic, the second tier league in Nigeria, the Nigeria National League (NNL), gets a starting date to be January 30th, 2021 and the fixtures for the season has also been released.
Coach of Gateway United, Hakeem Busari expresses his delight with the return of the league and explains that they just need to speed up their preparations and seek to go up from the NNL after playing in the lower league for a long time.
“We’re praying and even praying that our excellency, Prince Dapo Abiodun, for what we’re asking because we want to go into close camping for two weeks before the commencement of the league as that will give us a chance to check and touch on the team,” said coach of Gateway United, Hakeem Busari.
Questioned about the target of his team, coach Hakeem said “our target has not changed. We want to go back to the elite league where we belong. We’ve been there before, we’ve been on the continent, so we want to go back to the elite league.”
The coach also said that they are preparing to adapt to the artificial turf despite been used to playing on grass and as such, they have and artificial turf in Ijebu where they can always go to whenever they’re preparing to take on a team that plays on such turf, so as to get them in sync with the ball movement and play on such turf.
Gateway United starts the league with a trip to Lagos to take on Gateway United in Agege and hopefully to start the league on a high.
