By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
The country’s football governing body, Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has dismissed with a wave of the hand the claims by Super Falcons head coach Randy Waldrum, that his team failed woefully at Paris 2024 Olympics Women’s Football Tournament because they did not prepare well prior to the competition in France.
Nigeria’s senior women’s football team was eliminated from the ongoing Olympic Games after the 11-time African champions were defeated 1-0 by Canarinhas of Brazil and Spain’s La Roja respectively and also slumped to 3-1 loss to Japan in the final Group C match to crash out without winning a match, conceding five goals and scoring a paltry lone goal.
Apparently to absolve himself from the criticisms that have trailed Super Falcons’s disastrous outing in Paris 2024, Waldrum told the media in Nantes, France shortly after Nigeria crashed out of the global sports fiesta in the group stage that Super Falcons did not camp long enough before arriving France for the Olympics.
American-born gaffer who blamed lack of time for proper preparations for the Super Falcons poor outing at the Paris 2024 Olympics insisted that the team could have done better if they had enough time for good preparations.
“We prepared for them (all three opponents) based on the fact that we haven’t had a lot of time,”
“We missed the last window before the Olympics, and so we missed 10 days of good training before the Olympics.” Waldrum told a news outlet in Nantes.
But his employers NFF, has fired back describing his claims as false and laughable as the Super Falcons received pre-Olympics preparations good enough to be ready for the Olympic Games.
Reacting to Waldrum’s claims that Super Falcons flop in Paris 2024 Olympics was due to poor preparations for the Games, NFF President Ibrahim Musa Gusau advised the coach to look elsewhere for the reasons he failed to come up with the tactics that would have helped the Super Falcons to perform well in the competition.
According to him the federation went out of its way to prepare the Super Falcons very well for the Olympic Games by organising a two-week training camp in Seville, Spain and also arranged a Grade A international friendly match with reigning Olympic champions Canada in Seville for the team too.
Said he: “I hope he is aware Olympics sports is the responsibility of the Ministry of Sports, even at that they sponsored all the sports that qualified for the Olympic Games to go to Paris 2024 Olympics including the Super Falcons.
“But even at that NFF in its wisdom organised a well conducive camp for the Super Falcons in Seville in Spain, for them for two weeks, and a grade A friendly match with Canada, instead of the one week camp arranged for them by Ministry of Sports “.
Gusua argued that it is in the public domain that NFF made sure that the Super Falcons camped for two weeks in Seville, and played one preparatory game against Canada ahead of the Olympic Games hence the federation should not be blamed for the team’s poor outing in France.
Prompt News reports that this is not the first time Waldrum and NFF will disagree on issues as the Super Falcons coach had more than once accused the federation of not getting his back and their matter got to a head when he accused the NFF of misappropriation of FIFA funds preparatory to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup final in Australia and New Zealand.
The American on the podcast, The Whistle, has voiced his concern over NFF’s allocation of funds made available by FIFA, insisting that the federation pinched the World Cup preparatory money from FIFA.
“In October, every country was given $960,000 from FIFA to prepare for the World Cup, where is that money?
“Up until about three weeks ago, I had been owed 14 months salary, and then they paid seven months salary.
“We still have players that haven’t been paid since two years ago when we played the summer series in the USA…it is a travesty,” Waldrum told the foreign media on July 7, 2023. READ ALSO:
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Surprisingly, the NFF in its wisdom renewed Waldrum’s contract after it expired on October 31, 2023 and now he has stirred another controversy after his team crashed out of Paris 2024 Olympics Women’s Football Tournament .
