President of Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, Ibrahim Musa Gusau has expressed optimism that Nigeria’s under-17 women’s team, the Flamingos, are motivated to beat their United States of America counterparts when they clash in the quarter-final of the ongoing FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup in India, Completeports.com reports.
The newly elected president stated that the girls will give it their best shot and get the result that will fetch them a semi-final ticket, adding that the spirit is high in their camp in Goa, and all things being equal, can go all the way to win the trophy.
“They [the Flamingos] are very well motivated and working very hard to do the country proud by winning the cup. We are mobilizing Nigerians in India with the help of the Nigerian Embassy to ensure that the girls feel at home. The target of the girls is to be the first African team to win the women’s World Cup.
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“I have been speaking with the coach and officials of the team and I have charged them not to be wasteful with the scoring chances they create like during their group games. Now they have promised to take their chances and beat the USA to advance, ” Gusau stated.
On the ouster of Nigerian clubs from the CAF Champions League and Confederation Cup, the NFF boss expressed disappointment at the way all four clubs exited the continent, stressing that the NFF met with the 20 clubs in the NPFL and are working to put a stop to Nigerian clubs’ poor showing in Africa.
“The NFF under my watch will give priority attention to our leagues and ensure that our clubs have improved performance in continental competitions. We have to try and win in Africa again. It’s been a very long time since we won the Champions League and it is about time we start winning again, ” Gusau said.
By Richard Jideaka, Abuja
6 Comments
Talk is cheap. Have their bonuses been paid? Wait, could they be minors so they should play for fun and enjoy themselves on the pitch only?
It’s a new administration let’s support them with a positive mindset,hopefully it will be all gravy henceforth.
Isn’t it too early to start condemning this man? He does deserve to be given that benefit of doubt. What exactly are we expecting him to say at this stage of his tenure if not what he just said concerning the issue being addressed in his statement? What is really cheap in that talk, Bro? We as fans have our problem. Some of us are pathological skeptics. No matter what the intention of the coach or the NFF is concerning a footballng issue, we will always find a hole, even if there’s none, in order to give them that tag of failure. Kai…God help naija
What is happening to these football administrators is what i will call MISPLACED PRIORITES. They want to win Continental/World cups but fail to invest in school/grassroot development of the same football they claim to love so much. It will take a miracle for our girls to beat the girls from USA because the Americans are better than our girls and this is the same country that does not take soccer seriously like we do, most Americans don’t even know the rules of the game yet their wards rubbish Nigerian teams every time we play against them these days, i cannot forget the dominant display their boys had against us at the U20 tournament in Poland. The Americans develop all sports from their school system , right from primary to tertiary institutions and some undergraduates go to the Olympics to win Gold medals from school in US . We use to grow sports from our school system just like the United States but somehow the present crop of sports/school administrators decided to take sports especially football from our school system and the dwindling fortunes of our football is there for everyone to see that we are on the wrong track yet all we see is fight over positions not to develop our football but to make money and a push for relevance. Let us take our football back to school if we intend to win anything in football otherwise countries like Togo, Benin, Niger etc will catch up with us and the humiliation on the field of play will be extremely embarrassing..
you make me laugh with this kind of comment. do you know how much American government spend on sports, not to even talk about individual scholarship. when you said American doesn’t know anything about soccer, with amount of money spend on sport, America should have won world cup. the moment Nigeria citizen start taking up the responsibilities of helping Nigeria start sponsoring player like mko abiola and some others did, ask our previous players they will tell you what about did not just for football, even our long jumbler will tell you how abiola help her without doing this our sports might not improve. nff cant do it alone, state government need to step up, us as a citizen need to create scholarship. if we want out sport to grow, we might need to look in to this. my know a guy that spend 4 years at the university in united state that didn’t pain a cent because he was on school scholarships because he was on the school soccer team, this are the kind of thing that we might do that will help our sport to grow. so bro American spend a lot of money on sport, they just didn’t depend on government like us to do everything for them. no offend brother just passing by
The Flamingo girls made me proud the only mistake was the substitute of the goal keeper cos the formal keeper had a good day and trust me that keeper could have saved some kicks but all the same we learn from our mistakes