I struggled with sleep on Tuesday evening watching the second leg game between Bayana Bayana of South Africa and Nigeria’s Super Falcons inside the Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria, South Africa. The match was the decider to know which of the two countries would qualify to participate in the 2024 Olympic Games later in July in France. The game ended on a barren note. Super Falcons won the first leg played in Abuja by 1-0, a goal scored by the team’s captain, Rasheedat Ajibade.
The South Africans were fidgety on Tuesday evening largely due to their inexperience while the Nigerians, always loaded to the hilt with experienced girls, ran around the pitch without a discerning tactical plan. They barely strung together two passes or could control the ball expertly before deciding what to do with it. The falcons’ clueless pattern of play wasn’t ever going to produce a goal for Nigeria, even if the game was played for 900 minutes.
It was quite embarrassing watching the South Africans passing through the immigration centre inside the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja seven days to the match day, and it showed in the way they battled our girl in every department of the game in Abuja. Who will blame Oshoala for arriving at the Abuja camp 24 hours before the first leg in Abuja? Not when Coach Waldrum does whatever he likes and goes unpunished.
Waldrum shouldn’t tell us where to camp the team. NFF should ask Falcons to start their camping sessions soonest in Nigeria with the mandate to Waldrum to rebuild the team by introducing new players from the domestic leagues. Besides, such localised camping sessions can help the girls whose season ends early to head to the camp. Movement to the designated European camp should only start when the girls are complete.
No country runs its sports on the yearly fiscal budget because of its clumsiness. Sports competitions are run on a calendar system which gives participating countries enough time to prepare adequately for periods of one to four years. Besides, there are other tournaments that serve as qualifiers for the main events across the globe which makes it imperative that funding must be handy, not dependent on any form of bureaucracy.
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