The role of the media in the reportage of any activity or event can never be over emphasised giving their relevance to the society as a whole.

Whether social, political or religious activity, the picture painted by the media is always what the entire society and populace most times uphold.

In the light of the above assertion, it is the pattern and perspectives the media portraying its reportage of any social event or activity like sports and football in particular that affects its popularity and consciousness in the mind of an average individual in the society.

Coming to the subject matter, there has been in existence an imbalance between the reportage and publicity of foreign and local football leagues in Nigeria by the Nigeria print media (the newspaper) as aresult of better regards given to the foreign football league news instead of local ones.

Obviously it was noticed that the volume of foreign football news in Nigeria dailies are most times three or five times higher than that of local news which may not be up to a full page of a newspaper.

In this research work, a comparative analysis shall be carried out on the media reportage of both foreign and local football news with reference to few Nigeria dailies.The study like every other is made up of five chapters and contains all necessary sections needed for standard and careful data analysis as well as discussions.

Therefore, only 3 newspapers were selected for this study namely; the Punch, the Guardian and the Tribune. 

By statistical calculation, issues were selected per month concerning the subject matter for each of the newspapers under study. Using simple random sampling, 8 issues were arrived at by selecting 2 issues for the study and then the 2 issues were multiplied by the 4 weeks in a month.

Thus, a sample size of 288 issues was used for the study. As mentioned earlier, 2 issues were selected per week and then multiplied by 4 weeks to arrive at eight issues each month. The issues in each month were now multiplied by the 12 calendar months of study to arrive at 96 issues for each newspaper.

However, the 12 calendar months in this context were months in the year 2007, that is, month of January to December. Furthermore, the 96 issues were multiplied by the 3 newspapers, that is, Punch, Guardian and Tribune under study to arrive at a sample size of 288.

TITLE PAGE

APPROVAL PAGE

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

1.2STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

1.3OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

1.4SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

1.5SCOPE OF THE STUDY

1.6 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

1.7 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 ORIGIN OF NIGERIAN FOOTBALL

2.2 TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA REPORTING

2.3 THE STRUCTURE OF FOOTBALL REPORTAGE IN THE NIGERIAN MEDIA

2.4 EUROPE AS THE CENTER OF MODERN FOOTBALL 

2.5 NIGERIA AS PERIPHERY IN FOOTBALL REPORTAGE 

2.5.1 THE RICH AND THE OPPRESSED CONCEPT OF MEDIA REPORTAGE

2.5.2 CELEBRATION OF THE JOURNEY TO EUROPE

2.6 THE NIGERIAN FOOTBALL FANS’ PERSPECTIVE 

2.6.1EVERYDAY DISCOURSE 

2.6.2 DEFICIENT LOCAL KNOWLEDGE 

2.6.3 FROM THE STADIUM TO THE BAR

2.7 LOCAL LEAGUE FAN CLUBISM 

2.7.1 PROUD SYMBOLISM

2.8 VALENCE STRUCTURING OF LOCAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE: THE “EMPIRE†AND THE “OTHERâ€

REFERENCES

CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN

3.2 SAMPLE SIZE

3.3 SAMPLING TECHNIQUE

3.4 UNIT OF MEASUREMENT/ANALYSIS

CHAPTER FOUR

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

4.1 RESULTS

4.2 DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

-Tables and figures

CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 CONCLUSION

5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY