Flamingos head coach Bankole Olowookere has expressed disappointment with the team’s 1-0 loss to France in the ongoing FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup on Wednesday.
A late goal from Maïssa Fathallah was enough to seal the three points for France after the Flamingos had fought pretty hard to at least earn a draw.
Reacting after the game, Olowookere, in a chat with FIFA.com, stated that it’s painful and heartbreaking that his girls narrowly lost to France.
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“The game we played against France was much better than the one against Canada.
“If we had shown the same kind of fight in that first game, I don’t think we’d be in the situation we’re in now. It was really unfortunate to concede that late goal, it was painful, heartbreaking even.
“We’ll just keep working hard and see if we can get something out of it to stay in the tournament.”
4 Comments
Enough of the emotions where’s Chidi Harmony your main source of goals? This same Owambe nepotism destroyed manu Garba as well. You’re all destroying the nation with your selfishness. Stop the drama these French team are not super but you’re here lamenting. All these coaches tends to perform worse at second chance because of corruption and nepotism.
@Chima, that’s the in-thing now; that is stuff your team with 90% your fellow tribes people. But do you really blame them? Has it not been institutionalized, right from the presidency, from the immediate past one to the current one? Was never like that with Obj and Yar’adua. It was always merit over nepotism.
It’s only obvious in football cos it’s a public thing. The age-grade teams are their experimental playground. It’s only the senior teams that they’re more careful. If Madugu had attempted it, we won’t be champions today.
Onigbinge that tried to introduce that rubbish into the senior team in 2012 and failed woefully. The SE then started declining until we then began to rebuild again gradually. Thank God we mostly appoint foreigners who’re blind to tribes and languages.
The team would start will but lose concentration, ideas and steam late in matches.
There was no standout player, which is odd as Nigeria produces quality players at the level – Chidi Harmony, Peace Effiong and Rasheedat Ajibade to mention a few.
The scouting for players must have been flawed and must have been riddled with corruption based on what we saw.
The players on show themselves actually performed with desire and commitment but ultimately, lack of quality let them down.
Poor direction and instructions from Coach Bankole didn’t help their cause. He accommodated the shooting of worthless long shots and he failed to discourage disastrous selfish play.
We fans focus too much on strikers but the backbone (no pun intended) of a solid team is defence. From the goalkeeper to the outfield defensive apparatus, they all exhibited substandard skillset which ultimately doomed the team against France.
We are back to praying for others to fail for us to progress……..LMAOooo.
I wonder what patriotic Nigerians like Tony K have to say about this sordid, morbid, turbid, technically and tactically bereft assemblage by yet another local coach.
Those who said there is nothing special about qualifying for tournaments or from group stage of competitions have now been forced to become prayer warriors……LMAOoooo