{"id":13934,"date":"2025-05-01T22:05:40","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T22:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/martins-chineme-landmark-case-finds-negligence-for-nigerian-players-death\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T22:05:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T22:05:40","slug":"martins-chineme-landmark-case-finds-negligence-for-nigerian-players-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/martins-chineme-landmark-case-finds-negligence-for-nigerian-players-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Martins Chineme: Landmark case finds negligence for Nigerian player’s death"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Nigeria is known for international stars such as Victor Osimhen, Ademola Lookman and, further back, Jay-Jay Okocha and Nwankwo Kanu, who faced heart problems of his own<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But some local players – in a sign of the atmosphere enveloping the country’s domestic football – turned down a chance to support their late friend.<\/p>\n

“I begged three players to testify,” said Michael Chineme.<\/p>\n

“But they were afraid of their career – that if they came, they might be threatened, they might lose their job.”<\/p>\n

Now those self-same players are celebrating a case which the family always hoped would deliver justice “not just for Martins, but for every other footballer”.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been approached by some players and by his friends that still play,” said Michael. “They were like: ‘Thank you for this, we never knew this was still going on, we never knew you were this resilient’.”<\/p>\n

Along with the federation, league and match commissioner, Nasarawa United must pay the family damages, but Michael says the amount will not even cover their legal fees.<\/p>\n

That is one reason a foundation he established in his brother’s name in 2022 will help footballers legally, but not financially.<\/p>\n

“I set up Chineme Martins Football Foundation to see the little way it can help those who have been suffering these kinds of issues,” he said.<\/p>\n

As Michael admits, the family might easily have given up the legal fight without Fifpro’s support.<\/p>\n

In return, the global players’ union is delighted the steadfast Chinemes may have secured a brighter future for footballers across the planet.<\/p>\n

“There’s a simple message,” Alves said of the ruling.<\/p>\n

“For the people involved on the pitch, this is work. People that organise these competitions have to make sure they’re doing it in safe conditions.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nigeria is known for international stars such as Victor Osimhen, Ademola Lookman and, further back, Jay-Jay Okocha and Nwankwo Kanu, who faced heart problems of his own. But some local players – in a sign of the atmosphere enveloping the country’s domestic football – turned down a chance to support their late friend. “I begged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport-africa","category-world-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13936,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13934\/revisions\/13936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}