Chidiebere Nwobodo’s header came from a corner. Rangers won the NPFL, 2-1 over Ikorodu City, ninth title for the club on 68 points. Set-piece goal. Rehearsed movement, targeted delivery, free header at the back post. Corner stats in football, greyhound racing odds at a midweek card, whatever sport you’re tracking, 2025-26 kept showing the same thing. Premier League? 25% of goals from set pieces, was 20.6% last year. NPFL? 1.97 goals per match, was 2.06.
Daniel Ogunmodede’s Remo Stars won the 2024-25 NPFL. First title in the club’s history. The whole fanbase expected a dynasty, or at least a decent run at keeping the trophy. Over the summer, 85% of the players left. Bigger wages elsewhere, continental football offers, the usual reasons. The academy had been producing talent for years, one graduate ended up at Inter Milan in 2023, but you can’t rebuild an entire first eleven through the youth setup in one window.
New signings came in, they needed months to gel, and months is exactly what the schedule doesn’t give you. By mid-season results were heading south and the table wasn’t lying about where the club was. Final matchday, Bendel Insurance at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium, three points required. Drew. Kun Khalifat won their game the same afternoon. The defending champions went to the second tier.
When a league averages 1.97 goals per match, set pieces become your most reliable scoring method. One corner, one free header, one goal, and you’ve probably won. Remo Stars went into the season with a new squad that hadn’t trained together long enough to run rehearsed corner movements, and you could see it in how they attacked set pieces all year, rushed, uncoordinated, nobody quite sure where to stand.
Nine titles. Biggest club in NPFL history. And Enyimba spent 2025-26 near the bottom of the table with a different coach seemingly every few weeks. The most experienced one got replaced after a poor stretch of results, an interim came in, then a permanent hire arrived in January who had to learn the squad from scratch while the season was already halfway done. There was also a disagreement between the chairman and state government about who makes decisions, plus players with outstanding allowances and a stadium restriction that moved home games to venues without Enyimba supporters. The atmosphere at those matches was off, home fixtures without home support.
They let go of 22 players before the season. The chairman’s stated goal was the title. The season went somewhere else entirely.
You need weeks to build set-piece routines. Scouting each upcoming opponent on video, designing specific corner movements to exploit their positioning, drilling those movements until players run them cold. A coach who joins in January walks into a group with none of that. The January appointment at Enyimba had to start from zero with a squad he didn’t pick, midway through a season that was already going sideways.
Fidelis Ilechukwu coached Rangers all season. Two NPFL titles with the club now. Rivers United had Finidi George, a former Super Eagles coach, for the full campaign.
