What makes the ideal NPFL forward?

goal.com

Goal examines the specific striking qualities needed to succeed as a leading frontman in the Nigerian Professional Football League. Even though it is essentially a team sport, football is very much conditioned by individuality. The pitch can be divvied up into zones and designate positions, but it is the unique abilities of the players who take up those zones that interpret the functions required in different ways.

That said, few positions are more subject to interpretation than that of the centre-forward. There is the static target man, used as a wall off which the ball caroms, bringing other teammates into play; there is the poacher, who is focused on latching onto balls played behind the defensive line; the false-nine; the battering ram...the classifications increase mitotically by the year.

So, what kind of striker is best suited to the Nigerian Professional Football League?

This information is useful as a stock team-building template—there is less homogeneity in football than there once was, but teams within the same league do still tend to play with the same broad strokes, even though the specifics vary. The English Premier League, for example, is a lot less structured and tactical than, say, La Liga or Serie A.

What should a coach seeking the NPFL title look out for in a striker?

Well, first of all, it would be worth it to take a look at the league's top scorers over the last five seasons, and look for correlations in terms of style.

Gbolahan Salami (17 goals), Mfon Udoh (23), Victor Namo (18), Sibi Gwar (17), Jude Aneke (20) all led the league in goals going back to 2011, and there is a thread that runs right through this list: explosive pace and/or movement (the exception would probably be Namo, who was neither overly quick nor wily, but was a towering, powerful runner with the ball at his feet).

This is hardly surprising, of course. Pacy forwards are a lot trickier to come up against - this is a universal fact - but it is even truer in the NPFL, where defenders often focus on building muscle mass and core strength than agility.  As such, quick changes of direction do not come as easily as they should, leading to a high number of fouls in and around the penalty area - there have been 22 penalties awarded in the league to date, all of which, if converted would have accounted for over 8 percent of the league's goal total.

Weirdly, none of the above-named five players managed to pull their teams to a league title during their Golden Boot seasons: both Salami and Udoh came closest with second-place finishes at Warri Wolves and Enyimba respectively, but none of the other three featured for teams that finished in the top five. In fact, Gwar's 17 goal-haul was not enough to whisk Niger Tornadoes away from relegation in 2012!

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This is perhaps explained by understanding the paradox of great goalscorers: by virtue of their own efficiency, they more and more demand dependence, thereby weakening the collective. The more the team seeks to feed the 'in-form striker', the less committed it becomes to the other aspects of team-play.

Still, what it is about pace and movement that is such a particular menace in the NPFL? 

Counter-intuitively, very few teams in the league play with a high defensive line, preferring a medium block. There is also often a significant turnover in terms of personnel league-wide; Enyimba, for example, have begun the new season with entirely new full-backs - Uche John, while not a new acquisition, was not the regular first choice last season, while Chima Akas was brought in from relegated Sharks.

This means that the cohesion required to hold a proper offside line is never fully entrenched. Combined with a lack of concerted pressing, it is quite easy to loft balls over the top. Therefore, forwards with a quick burst of pace over the ground can very often burst through and be immediately through on goal - Salami got a lot of reward by this route, as did the sprightly Gwar.

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Of course, this is a structural failure; it is hardly replicable all through the league, else one might be apt to ask how the coaches earn their cheques. While these are fixable, rather less so are individual flaws in defending.

At the risk of making a generalization, the NPFL remains in the grip of man-marking, fitting in a league where the concept of defending is still primarily reactive. There is a reason, however, why man-marking is considered dated; even when executed perfected, it exacts a high physical and structural tariff, pulling the defensive line out of shape and making penetration easy.

By virtue of this, forwards with intelligent movement will invariably prosper, for the simple reason that they can move into pockets of space quickly and finish. Udoh set the new league record for goals in a single season back in 2014 doing exactly this, even though he was nominally Enyimba's right winger.

With no apparent effort toward altering the education of Nigerian defenders, and integrated pressing yet to take root, it appears pace and movement will continue to be the quickest route to goal in the NPFL for quite some time.