Kennedy Boboye, who led Sunshine Stars to avoid relegation in the Nigeria Premier Football League the previous season, stated that the team’s goal for the 2024–2025 season is to win the championship.
Before the second half of the previous season began, Boboye—a two-time NPFL champion coach at Plateau United (2017) and Akwa United (2021)—returned to the Sunshine Stars for a second stint. Despite their slow start, Boboye helped the team turn things around, as they finished 10th in the table with 52 points.
The Owena Babes began their Governor Douye Diri Pre-Season campaign on Monday with a 1-0 victory over Bayelsa United, the hosts of the competition. The team is now in Bayelsa.
One of their new signings, Ismail Ayodele, terrorised the hosts with his eyes on goal throughout the match, wasting no time to score the only goal in the 35th minute.
After the win, Boboye said the tournament was to be used to assess the players for their mission.
“We will work on the areas where we observed we are not doing well. Our target is to win the league; nothing short of that,” the two-time NPFL winner said in his post-match interview.
“We are not there yet; we are just a week in; by the time we stay together for two or three weeks, we will be better than what people are seeing here.”
Since their CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup campaigns between 2011 and 2012, Boboye has managed one of the most successful finishes for the club in the NPFL in almost a decade, sixth position during the 2015 campaign.
He was in charge of Sunshine Stars in the 2014/15 season, when they fell off in the title race against Enyimba and also missed out on what would have been a return to CAF inter-club football after three years.
