By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
It is no longer news that Nigeria has been eliminated from the ongoing 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup final in Australia and New Zealand even as co-hosts Australia that Nigeria defeated 3-2 in the group stage have now reached the last four in grand style.
Also qualified for the semi-final stage is England which Nigeria gave bruised noses but was defeated 4-2 through the lottery of penalty shootout after 120 minutes football could not produce a winner with England very much on the back foot throughout the match.
Indeed, Nigeria had started the 32-team biggest women’s football competition in the world like a house on fire by holding the reigning Olympic champions Canada to a barren draw in the opening Group B clash on July 21 at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium.
The 11-time (nine officially) African champions followed that performance up with another impressive 3-2 victory over Australia in front of massive home crowd to send fears down the spines of other opponents and raise the hopes of many football followers in Nigeria and in the diaspora that perhaps, the Super Falcons will go all the way to podium finish for the first time in Down Under.
Although the West Africans again played out a barren draw in the last group match against Republic of Ireland, five points from three matches guaranteed a place for Nigeria in the Round of 16 where England laid ambush.
Unfortunately, after the bruising 120 minutes of football without any goal scored by either side, the encounter was decided by penalty shootout which England’s Three Lionesses guided by Dutch-born tactician, Sarina Wiegman won 4-2.
By crashing out in the Round of 16, Nigeria senior women’s football team, Head Coach Randy Waldrum’s tactical and technical abilities to pilot a hugely talented side like
Super Falcons to international successes have been seriously called to question.
A closer look at the performance of Nigeria in this current edition of FIFA Women’s World Cup final in Australia and New Zealand showed clearly that the country has everything to compete with the more illustrious nations like the United States of America (USA), Germany, Norway and Japan that have all won the coveted trophy at one time or another.
This is even as Nigeria is one of the seven countries that have featured in every edition of FIFA Women’s World Cup final since inception in 1991 in China. The others are USA, Sweden, Brazil, Japan, Norway and Germany.
Sadly, while USA, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Japan and Brazil have all made podium finish at different times, the seventh country Nigeria has not reached ordinary semi-final stage in her history with the quarter-final finish or last eight in the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup final in USA still the highest peak the multiple African champions have attained in her 32 years of participating in the FIFA FIFA Women’s World Cup final.
The feat was achieved under an indigenous veteran Head Coach, Ismaila Mabo who managed the Super Falcons at the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup final, Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics and later Athens 2004 Summer Olympics.
Mabo also led Nigeria to win the African Women Championship (AWC) now called Women’s African Cup of Nations (WAFCON) back to back with Super Falcons winning the maiden edition in 1998 without losing a match and the team scoring 28 goals and conceding none in five matches. He was also incharge when Nigeria successfully defended the WAFCON trophy in South Africa in 2000.
Although all Nigeria-born Super Falcons managers after Mabo have won the WAFCON trophy except coaches Joseph Ladipo aka (Jossy Lad) and Khadiri Ikhana who lost the title in 2008 and 2012 respectively, Nigeria has failed to impress at the FIFA Women’s World Cup final after 1999 in USA.
In her eight appearances at FIFA Women’s World Cup finals since 1991, Nigeria has the unenviable records of being the team with most goals conceded and most matches lost.
Expectations that US-born coach Randy Waldrum who led Super Falcons to the Round of 16 in Australia and New Zealand will take Nigeria all the way to the final on August 20 at the iconic Stadium Australia in Sydney evaporated like the early morning dews last week after England eliminated Nigeria from the competition courtesy of 4-2 penalty win.
This was the same stage Waldrum’s predecessor, Thomas Dennerby from Sweden took Nigeria to in the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup final in France. But unlike Waldrum, Dennerby won the WAFCON trophy in 2018 in Ghana while his successor lost the trophy to South Africa as Nigeria finished in the fourth place in the last edition in Morocco in 2022.
However, the reasons for Nigeria’s poor record in the FIFA Women’s World Cup finals are not far-fetched with lack of proper organisation and poor coaching the main culprits for the country’s woes at world level.
Lack of tactical discipline and visible technical deficiencies of Super Falcons coaching crew especially in the Round of 16 epic clash between Nigeria and England at Brisbane Rectangular Stadium, ensured that Nigeria lost the game even when England key player, Lauren James was red carded in the second half.
An experienced coach who is tactically and technically good enough would have capitalised on England’s misfortune of losing one player to red card offence by changing the team formation and tactics, using Nigeria’s numerical strength to defeat England but the reverse was the case.
A check at the pedigrees of the four coaches whose teams qualified for the semi-final stage of the ongoing FIFA Women’s World Cup finals revealed that these four coaches are top-notch tacticians. They are Australia’s women’s football team, Tony Gustavsson from Sweden and his Netherlands women’s football team counterpart, Andries Jonker, a Dutch.
The remaining two whose teams qualified for the semi-finals are Peter Gerhardsson who heads his native Sweden’s senior national women’s football team and Sarina Wiegman England women’s football team gaffer who is from Netherlands.
Australia’s Gustavsson was an assistant coach of USA under Pia Sundhage from April 2012, left and returned in 2014 to serve under Jill Ellis as both of them won the FIFA Women’s World Cup for USA in 2015 and 2019 before he was hired by Australia Football Association on September 29, 2020. His records of achievement are in the public domain.
Also, Netherlands Jonker was hired in August 2022 by KNVB to replace underperforming Mark Parsons who left after a disappointing EURO 2022 which saw the defending champions knocked out in the quarter-finals. He has now taken the Dutch to semi-final stage within one year incharge.
Sweden’s Gerhardsson was appointed in 2016 to replace former national team player and head coach Pia Sundhage has long history of performance while the pedigree of Wiegman, England women’s football team Head Coach is not in doubts as she proven herself at the top managerial level by winning the elusive UEFA Women’s Championship trophy for England in 2022.
There is no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria’s Super Falcons coach (Waldrum) who doubles as the Head Coach of University of Pittsburgh Panthers women’s soccer club is not in the ‘Elite Class’ of Gustavsson, Gerhardsson, Jonker and Wiegman respectively.
A closer look at the four remaining coaches in competition revealed that two European countries Sweden and Netherlands have two coaches managing the four semi-finalists. While Australia’s Gustavsson and Sweden’s Gerhardsson are from Sweden, the duo of Jonker and Wiegman who are coaching Netherlands and England are natives of Holland.
It is therefore instructive for the Nigeria football governing body, NFF and its supervising Ministry of Sports, to shun personal aggrandizement, nepotism and outright naivety in picking the next Head Coach of Super Falcons. Any attempt by the football house to hire another “half-baked” Nigerian or expatriate manager for the Super Falcons will spell doom and have severe consequences.
The authorities in Nigeria may have to follow the footsteps of countries like England and Australia that went out of their ways to recruit foreign coaches to manage their senior women’s football teams and these coaches are two matches away from winning the FIFA Women’s World Cup for the first time in their careers as a substantive head coach.
It will not be a bad idea if NFF Executive Board will settle for a highly qualified, result-oriented home grown head coach for the Super Falcons ahead of the commencement of 2024 Paris Olympic Games and 2024 WAFCON qualifiers starting next month. There should be no room for ethnic considerations in the choice of who leads the Super Falcons going forward.
But if the federation is serious to build a new Super Falcons team that will win the WAFCON in Morocco and also qualify easily for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup final, no matter the formula used by CAF and go all the way to the last four to break the jinx of Nigeria being a mere participant, a top-ranked coach with Women’s World Cup final experience should hired without any delay.
Nigeria’s senior women’s football team has hugely talented players plying their trade within and outside Nigeria hence only an experienced manager can get the best out of them at the top level of football.
Never again will unqualified foreign coaches be endorsed by the NFF Executive Board Members, no matter who brought them, to work on Part-time basis for the Giant of Africa when highly qualified and result-oriented coaches with FIFA Women’s World Cup final experience will be rejected on very lame excuses.
Super Falcons deserve quality manager in the class of Sarina Wiegman, Tony Gustavosson, Peter Gerhardsson and Andries Jonker if Nigeria hopes to qualify from Africa for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup final.
It is a known fact that Nigeria conquered African continent very early as the country embraced women’s football ahead of other African countries in the early 1990s when some patriotic far-sighted Nigerians got together to form the defunct Nigeria Female Football Proprietors Association (NIFPPA) led by Mr. Christopher Abisuga, owner of Golden Wonders FC of Lagos.
Members are Princess Hannah Bola Ngozi Jegede, Proprietress of Princess Jegede Babes of Lagos; Elder Eddington Bola Kuejunbola and Chief Larry Ezeh who are proprietors of top clubsides- Ufuoma Babes of Warri and Rivers Angels of Port Harcourt among others.
The efforts of these early pioneers in the development, promotion, sponsorship and administration of women’s football in Nigeria gave birth to the establishment of several women’s football clubs across Nigeria from where the then Nigeria Football Association (NFA) now Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) picked the pioneer members of the Super Falcons in 1991.
Sadly, 32 years after, Nigeria is still playing a catch up with the rest of the world because of the selfishness of some people in the corridors of Nigeria football past and present, many who did not play any part in the early development, growth, promotion and administration women’s football in Nigeria and Africa but today leading the crusade to stop the pioneers of the game from coming close to the national teams and Nigeria Women’s Football League (NWFL).
This is why the Super Falcons and Nigerian women’s football clubs will find it difficult to compete in Africa and globally.
