By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
Head Coach of Nigeria’s U-17 women’s football team Flamingos, Oloowokere Bankole has showered praises on his team for qualifying for the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup slated for India later this year despite playing out a goalless draw in the second leg of the final round match against Ethiopia on Saturday at the MKO Abiola National Stadium, Abuja.
This is even as he commended the Ethiopians for putting up a tough fight against the Flamingos who failed to score a goal for the first time in six matches after scoring 15 goals in five games in the African qualifying round.
A 1-0 away victory over Ethiopia in Addis Ababa a fortnight ago courtesy of Opeyemi Ajakaiye was all Nigeria needed to qualify ahead of Ethiopia on 1-0 aggregate after the return match in Abuja ended 0-0.
But Coach Bankole whose team struggled in the Saturday’s match and were lucky not to be beaten by the visitors who hit the post at least three times, said his players did not play their normal game because they were tensed.
According to him the players allowed anxiety to get better part of them especially in the first half when they could have got a goal, pointing out that they tried to play more purposeful in the second half but the Ethiopians defended well.
Said he: “our game plan was to get the job done early in the match but it was not be and when we changed strategy to attack our opponents in the second stanza they defended enmass. I will say we did well not to conceed too”.
Bankole who is qualifying a national team for a major international competition for the first time however revealed that injuries to some key players in his team forced him to adopt another strategy to see off the Ethiopians.
Said he: “I knew that the Ethiopians will come at us in Abuja after suffering home defeat hence we were prepared for a dog-fight with them and that was how it ended.
“I must commend the Ethiopians. They are not pushover team. They showed that they can play and they have their goalkeeper to thank for stopping us from scoring a goal at home”.
Meanwhile, the elated Flamingos gaffer has thanked Nigerian fans for supporting team, saying that the home support even when the team was not playing well was key to picking the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup ticket.
“We are grateful to Nigerian fans for supporting us through this journey. We thank the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) who found us worthy out of millions of Nigerians to undertake the task. They provided us the enabling environment to do the work and we believe that they will continue to provide the logistics to complete the assignment in India later this year”.
