GRASSROOTS FOOTBALL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES AS PREDICTORS OF PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Grassroots football lays the foundation of the game of football and its primary aim is
to increase participation for children, youths and those with physical disability.
However, its development in Nigeria is low and did not accommodate the perspectives
on which the foundation of grassroots football development was laid. Nonetheless,
there is a paucity of studies on grassroots football development strategies recently in
Nigeria. This study therefore, examined grassroots football development strategies as
predictors of professional football development (PFD) in Nigeria. Descriptive survey
research design was adopted, while self-developed and validated questionnaire was
used for data collection from 647 respondents. The descriptive statistics of frequency
counts and percentages were used to analyse the socio-demographic characteristics
of the respondents. While the descriptive statistics of frequency counts and
percentages, mean and standard deviation were used to analyse the research
questions. However, inferential statistics of multiple regressions was used to test the
hypotheses 1 and 2 at 0.05 alpha level. The result revealed that, the level of
professional football development was low in Nigeria (weighted mean=1.77). There
was a joint prediction of grassroots football development strategies of club networks,
modern facilities, male and female participation on PFD in Nigeria (F(4,642)=115.695,
p<0.05). Modern facilities (β=-0.394, p<0.05), male (β=-0.493, p<0.05) and female
participation (β=0.581, p<0.05) had relative prediction on PFD in Nigeria, while
club networks (β=-0.053, p>0.05) did not. The study concluded that, there was
significant joint and relative influence of grassroots football development on
professional football development in Nigeria. Recommendation was made that,
Nigerian Football Federation should collaborate with other relevant stakeholders in
the football industry to ensure that football is more developed from grassroots in
Nigeria; with emphasis on both male and female football.