It’s often said that there’s nothing like the promise of financial reward to motivate professional athletes to extraordinary feats and MFM FC are about to find out how true this is after the club promised to pay each player “close to a million naira” if they manage a victory over visiting Enugu Rangers on Wednesday.

Rangers travel to the Agege Stadium in Lagos for their 2018/2019 Nigeria Professional Football League opener against the Olukoya Boys and MFM manager Fidelis Ilechukwu believes the promise of financial reward from the club will drive his players to extra lengths to achieve victory.

“In football, motivation is one of the biggest parts of the game and they were a lot of promises that came from the Director as well as the team vice chairman for them to win the game and I can tell you it’s almost a million naira. Win and get it,” Ilechukwu told busybuddiesng.com.

Ilechukwu said while the promise of financial reward would serve to spur his young charges, he wasn’t particularly motivated just by offers of pecuniary gain but by the fact that he is the “youngest manager in the Nigeria Professional Football League” working with “the youngest team”.

“For me it’s not all about the financial motivation because I am motivated already being the youngest manager in the Nigerian premier league and working with it is a motivation to me already then bringing the young players coming up if you want them to do beyond average for you, you must motivate them.”

The manager also revealed that the club were in the process of hiring a Psychologist for the team.