Wednesday 17 / April / 2024
Muscat: The two divisions below Oman’s professional top-tier football league are all set to merge, after the country’s football governing body met in a meeting to agree on the same.
While the top-level league – the Omantel Professional League – will stay the same, the first and second divisions under it will merge to form a new 30-league team. Each league currently contains 10 teams, and invitations have been received by the Oman Football Association from those clubs that wish to join this expanded league.
The OFA decided to proceed with league expansion to increase the quality of competition in the Sultanate, encourage more people to come to football matches, and improve the interest in local football.
Speaking to Times of Oman, Saeed Al Bulushi, the General Secretary of the Oman Football Association, said this was a demand that had been put forward by many of the clubs in the lower divisions.
“The heads of these clubs wanted to merge the first and second divisions, and we held an extraordinary general meeting and there was a vote for it. They wanted to merge into one division, and this will be effective of the date of the vote, which means it will begin on 24 September. We are now working out a new system and the new rules and regulations to see how this will work. There will 30 teams in this division but there will be groups.
“Three teams from the Omantel Professional League will go down to this new division when they get relegated, and three will come up from the new first division when they get promoted,” Al Bulushi added. “We are still working on the rules and regulations – meetings are still going on.
This new first division will start in October, but we are still going on with the revision of the league, in terms of how it looks. Hopefully, the numbers of the matches will increase, the numbers of participants will increase, and this will be good for football.”
In addition, Hisham Al Adhwani, the director of the Omantel Professional League, said that new teams had until next week to register their interest in the new league.
“This request came from clubs who said they wanted to merge these divisions,” he said. “We created a committee to study this merging and it is going to be okay, because according to the OFA, there is an article which says that two competitions cannot be merged. There are three divisions – the OPL, the first division and the second division. This has been made to avoid any conflicts in competitions.
“But there was a change made to the article so that the clubs and the association could be made more flexible, and we are now working on this,” added Al Adhwani. “The Omantel Pro League will continue to be there, and there will be a new first division under that. The top league will have 14 teams, and below it, 30 clubs. Right now, we are opening up the participation for clubs that want to participate in this, but are not currently doing so. This new division has seen us open the door to clubs that want to participate, and they have until next week to put their interest forward. After that, we will know how many teams are participating."
