Flamingos head coach Bankole Olowookere has heaped plaudits on his players despite their elimination at the 2024 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup.
In a rematch of their epic quarter-final from India 2022, USA avenged their penalty shootout defeat against Nigeria with a 2-0 victory in their quarter-final at CFC Stadium in Santiago de los Caballeros on Saturday night.
USA made it to the semi-finals for the first time since the inaugural edition in 2008.
Kennedy Fuller and Kimmi Ascanio were on target for the Americans in the keenly contested encounter.
Olowookere praised his players for their spirited performance.
“I’m so proud of the girls, they’ve given it their best, come all this way and they are kids who are developing. They’ve given their best but maybe their best was not good enough,” he was quoted by FIFA.com.
“To my fellow Nigerians, we can go beyond this level and we will try and be better next time.”
By Adeboye Amosu
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Bankole’s Tactical Soft Underbelly Exposed
Not to put too fine a point on it, the Flamingos’ pattern of play was truly horrendous on the night as they crashed out of the World Cup at the quarter finals 2:0 in the hands of the impressive USA.
Their passing routines carried no purpose. They lacked imagination needed to carve out credible goals scoring chances. They were an embarrassment to themselves in particular and the art of football in general by launching aimlessly with long range hopeless shots that landed impotently in no-woman’s land.
In short, they were grotty in defence, gimcrack in attack and gewgaw in midfield which is why they are now gone from the competition.
Whilst I lauded them in the group stages for their barnstorming performances against opponents that were, in-the-main, weak, a perilously soft underbelly housing tactical fragilities was just peeking out from their game at that stage. Misplaced passes; miscommunication and misplaced priorities as to shooting or passes hovered above the team even in those smokescreen victories.
By the prickling of my thumb, I worried this team would lack the tactical nutrients to nourish their way through the technically demanding knock out stage against formidable opponents.
And, true to my fears, they would collapse at the first hurdle like a pack of meaningless card laid out on a doomed deck.
Indigenous Nigerian coaches can be tactically awful. It was really hard to decipher a game plan worthy of unsettling the Americans from Nigeria yesterday.
The 4-4-2 formation was constructed with movements lacking inventiveness and imagination. The midfield was commandeered and overrun by USA. Our strikers were left feeding off scraps as those meant to feed them elected to take hopeless pots at goal themselves .
Watching Nigeria’s performance on the night was like trudging through a sterile sandpit pit on painful boots with no laces.
All that said, some future stars might emerge from this team. If properly nurtured, tutured and trained, these same players might perform wonders in future under a more tactically grounded coach.
Though, I am yet to watch the game, but I know tactical ineptitude has always been the bane of most Nigerian coaches in a world where technology has taken over every thing.
So in football, real time digital analysis is the order of the day.
Olowookere’s technical and tactical deficiencies was the reason our young girls lost to a more tutored US girls. It was clear the Nigerian team lacked a good coach to cope with technical abilities of US girls from early minutes of the first half yet Bankole had no clue on how to tinker the Nigerian team to cope and boss the US team’ onslaught. Otherwise, the US team were not better than the Nigerian girls individually.
These girls should progress well into the U20 and managed by a more savvy coach as they have huge potential.
During preparations for the senior Women’s World Cup in 2023, Waldrum granted an interview in which he insinuated that local women team coaches in Nigeria were really not up to scratch having worked with a couple of them.
Now I see his points. Bankole’s ‘tactics’ was basically about building up play nicely from the back and then shoot from anywhere whenever you get to the final third. No creativity on unlocking the opposing team’s defenses.
It was pathetic watching the girls keep doing the same thing over and over again with no result. Why do you have strikers when you told defenders and midfielders to shoot from the edge of the 18, rather than work their way into the box and feed the strikers???
One on one, the young Nigerian girls were more talented than their American counterparts. But their coach was clearly more tactical and studied our pattern. Olowookere had no answer despite the deficiency being clear to all watching. Even the commentator was flabbergasted why exactly everyone kept shooting from distance. The girls were simply following the coach’s old school instructions.
This is not 2000 circa. Nigerian coaches must up their tactics and not rely on basic tactics or top teams with highly tactical and modern coaches will keep exposing them. They can only have their hurrahs with small trans.