By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
After several months of preparations including international friendly matches and preparation camps towards the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, Nigeria’s senior women’s football team, Super Falcons will in the early hours of Friday, July 21, 2023, clash with the reigning Olympic champions, Canada in the first Group B tie at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium.
Nigeria and Canada are not new in the competition as both have met twice at the FIFA Women’s World Cup previously hence alot will be at stake when they
open their account for this ninth edition of women’s football greatest showpiece when the first whistle sounds.
Already, the Nigerian contingent which left their base in Hotel Sofitel in Brisbane on Thursday morning, for the 100-minutes flight to Melbourne have settled down and looks ahead for the match with confidence and a determination to sustain their slight record against the Canadians at the biggest stage.
Nigeria and Canada met in their first FIFA World Cup in Sweden on June 8, 1995, both teams played out a 3-3 draw at the Olympia Arena in Helsingborg, with Nigeria’s goals coming from attackers Rita Nwadike 26′; Patience Avre 60′ and Adaku Okoroafor 77′.
This was after Canada had raced to a 2-0 lead within 20 minutes courtesy of Sarah Burtini 12′; Gally Donnelly 20′ and 55′ respectively, although both teams were eliminated at the group stage.
However, when both met again in Germany in 2011 edition, Perpetua Nkwocha’s 73′ goal gave Nigeria her first victory over Canada at the Rudolf-Harbig Stadium in Dresden even as both teams were again eliminated in the group stage.
But Canada with Head Coach Beverly Priestman
had beaten Nigeria twice in friendly matches and their latest encounter ending in a 2-2 draw in Victoria City in February 2022.
With the bragging rights of being the reigning Olympic champions, Canada will start the Friday match as top dogs just as the Canadians will be parading five players with more than 100 caps at international level. They are Christine Sinclair, Sophie Schmidt, Kadeisha Buchanan, Ashley Lawrence and Jessie Fleming.
Also, Sinclair is both the world’s record international caps holder (323) and record international scorer (190) and at 40, she is attending her sixth Women’s World Cup finals.
Sinclair who graduated from Canada’s U-19 level has been with the senior team and saw Canada’s best performance at the Women’s World Cup was in 2003, when they lost the Bronze medal match to hosts USA.
They were bundled out by the USA in the quarter-finals
when they hosted the competition eight years ago and will like to fancy their chances of lifting the FIFA Women’s World Cup to add to their Olympic Gold Medal hence they will come out in full force when they meet Nigeria in Melbourne.
For Nigeria and Nigerians, this Friday’s early morning match is the one everyone is waiting to watch or hear the result after the fuore over money and mode of preparations which culminated in series of war of words between the Head Coach Randy Waldrum and his employers Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).
Rather than face the task ahead, Super Falcons gaffer became the media favourite all of sudden and the team’s 15-day training camp in Gold Coast ahead of this tournament was not given enough attention by the Nigerian mainstream media.
But all that is now in the past as the NFF Technical Director, Austin Eguavoen recently told the media that Waldrum has apologised to the federation for his outbursts and pledged allegiance to his employers for sake of the Super Falcons who
are said to be in excellent spirit, having won their lastfour preparatory matches and brimming with an awesome winning mentality.
Most recently, the team defeated a hapless
Queensland Lions FC 8-1 in Brisbane, after wins over Costa Rica and Mexico in February 2023 and also over Haiti and New Zealand during tour to Turkey in April 2023 respectively.
Indeed, Super Falcons under Waldrum have played more quality international friendly matches than all the previous coaches of the team put together.
No sooner Waldrum was hired than the NFF arranged international friendly matches, using every FIFA International Window to prepare the team.
A closer look at the Super Falcons preparations for the 2022 WAFCON and 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup final showed Waldrum’s team started preparing with three matches at Festival Women’s Trophy Tour in Antalya, Turkey in February 2021.
Others are three games in Summer Series in Texas, USA against Team USA, Portugal and Jamaica in June 2021. Played two matches with Mali and South Africa in 6-Nation Invitational in Lagos in September 2021.
These are outside matches in WAFCON 2022 qualifiers against Ghana and Ivory Coast and after qualification, Falcons played two friendly matches against Canada in April losing one abd and drew the other. Thus in WAFCON proper Nigeria suffered two loses to South Africa and Zambia.
After Nigeria returned from the competition empty-handed, NFF again arranged more friendlies for Waldrum’s team with two games against Team USA in Kansas City and Washington DC in September 2022 which Nigeria lost.
In October, Nigeria’s Super Falcons travelled to Kobe to play former FIFA Women’s World Cup champions, Japan and was beaten 2-0 just as Falcons have since the beginning of 2023 played quality friendly matches as part of their preparations.
Nigeria was involved in the Revelation Cup in Leon, Mexico from February 15 to 22, losing to Mexico 1-0 and winning against Costa Rica 1-0 and Colombia 1-0 respectively.
The team travelled to Turkey recently where they defeated co-host New Zealand in another international friendly match before the latest 8-1 thrashing of Queensland Lions FC in training match in Brisbane.
With the above mentioned quality international matches under the team’s belt, it will be unacceptable to Nigerians if the Super Falcons fail to fly high in Down Under starting with the crunch match against Canada in Melbourne.
Unfortunately, Nigeria will miss the services of two key midfielders in Rasheedat Ajibade and Halimatu Ayinde, who were sent off during the second half of Nigeria’s semi-final clash with Morocco at last year’s WAFCON, and handed two-match bans. They served one of the bans in the third-place game against Zambia days after.
But 40-year-old captain and veteran defender, Onome Ebi has vowed to lead her squad to victory over their rivals, saying: “We look forward to an interesting match. Super Falcons will not bother about any team’s pedigree at this World Cup. In every of our matches, we will play to win”.
Perhaps, this optimism will push Super Falcons to go further than Nigeria’s quarter-final performance in 1999 in USA, starting with a victory over Canada in Melbourne early Friday.
Harry Awurumibe is Africa’s No.1 Women Football Journalist.
