Super Falcons head coach, Randy Waldrum has attributed the team’s poor outing at the 2024 Olympic Games to inadequate preparation.
Waldrum’s charges were eliminated from the women’s football event following a 3-1 loss to Japan on Wednesday.
The nine-time African champions previously lost to Brazil and world champions Spain.
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The Super Falcons scored once and conceded five goals in three games.
The American suggested that better preparation could have helped his side at the Olympics.
“We prepared for them [all three opponents] based on the fact that we haven’t had a lot of time,” he was quoted by ESPN.
“We missed the last window before the Olympics and so we missed 10 days of good training before the Olympics.”
By Adeboye Amosu
13 Comments
It reminded me of Brazilian comment before facing Falcons. The Brazilian said that her team prepared well for the Olympics.
Our coach is right. NFF always do things late and expect better results.
The problem of Nigeria football is still NFF. Can you imagine that we have Afcon qualifier in less than a month time and Super Eagles no get coach till now.
Well done girls. Football loving Nigerians are very proud of you all despite the result.
Forget Olympic and focus on Wafcon preparation.
God bless Nigeria.
The CEO of Piggybank Nigeria Ltd, Gusau and his joke board is still busy trying to save money by appointing coaches or approving camping programs at the last minute.
Just classic self sabotage. Pompei has advised severally to think like true suave businessmen. Invest big now in a quality coach and reap bigger later when the ROI is out from tournament payouts. I mean, where’s the $4m windfall from the Afcon?
And who’re they saving for? Themselves! Super Eagles coach? Maybe 2 days to the next match so they can appoint as another “Finidi” and no one can counter cos of time constraints.
Gusau keep doing the same thing and getting the same result!He appears to be stubborn as a mule!
Remain the same no consequences for the bad leaders.Expect no good output.
In as much as we can blame the NFF let’s not forget that NFF is the same yesterday today and forever. Every coach has always done their best regardless of poor welfare. Can we compare this team welfare to Siasia led team that won bronze ??? Siasia had to book hotel from his own pocket and the team only arrived the games on match day and yet they won against a strong Japanese side, which prompted a Japanese Millionaire Doctor to do a giveaway to Siasia and the rest of the players. My point here is that Waldrum and NFF are both not good for Nigeria. Even if you give Waldrum the best welfare he has no scoring pattern. Waldrum is not good enough I am tired of saying this over and over again. Hire Magudu on interim or hire ex Moroccan coach, and please these are my personal opinion!!!!
Greedy, clueless, selfish, inconsiderate, inchoate, incompetent NFF.
There are 3 windows for friendlies between 20th and 29th October 2024 for FIFA Senior Women teams
And 2 windows between 24th November and 2nd December.
That means 5 serious matches can be played by our Falcons if glasshouse people are alright upstairs.
Will NFF camp our falcons for those windows? I hope they prove me wrong even if I doubt so.
However, will this leopard dare to change its spots? I wish we can privatize our national teams
Nonsense.
Qualities friendlies before the Olympics could have priceless and supremely helpful for the chances of attaining a podium finish for the Super Falcons in the mundial.
The team could have honed the long ball strategy used against Spain if they had played a team that plays like Spain in friendlies and Wadlrum’s folly not to include credible center attacking midfielders and more wingers could have been address with the drafting of better suited options to provide squad depth and resilience that the team lacked in France.
I learnt a lot from monitoring the Super Falcons in this tournament.
Waldrum was using the group matches to experiment whereas quality friendly matches against Portugal, Argentina and South Korea (for example) would have been immensely helpful templates and prototypes as to how the Falcons would approach these foes.
We played Canada in an Okrika-fabric (Okrika is a Nigerian slang used to refer to affordable second-hand clothes) friendly when Caftan opponents were there aplenty.
Did we play any North American team? So playing Canada was as useless a preparatory foe as a practicing how to flee from a pack of dead warthogs.
In the tournament, it became clear that Okeke wasn’t ready with the full fullback comfit of skills; something that could have been addressed early enough. Demehin’s proclivity for pressing the Super Eagles’ Ndidi-type self-destruct tackling button could have been managed (Nigeria were still in contention against Spain and Japan before Demehin’s headless chicken tackles stitched their arses to the wall of despair). Echegini could have emerged as the unlikely centre forward due to her razor sharpness in front of goal and her uncanny ability to sniff out scoring possibilities. Ucheibe is never an attacking midfielder because she hasn’t got the fluidity of movement and goal scoring credibility to carry that role: another factor that may have forced Waldrum’s hand to reconsider his 4-1-4-1 formation.
Iheuzo’s inadequacies in front of goal could have forced a rethink of the starting 11 centre forward. Okeke’s frailties and Nicole’s Payne’s rising credentials could also have been brought into sharp relief pre-tournament.
You can never place a price on quality friendlies. I belong to that demography that remember how high flying midfielder Wilson Orunma was dropped from the 2002 World Cup party on the account of his self-destructing midfield displays in quality (i mean quality) friendlies prior to the 2002 World Cup. The midfield simply crumbled and collapsed whenever he replaced Okocha particularly in the game against Ireland which served as a dress-rehearsal for the World Cup game against England.
So yes, the successful participation of the Super Falcons was holed below the waterline by NFF/Sports Ministry’s failure to commit resources into arranging quality pre-tournament friendlies for the Super Falcons: friendlies that could have allowed Waldrum address shortcomings he would later be addressing in the tournament proper, when it was too late.
Spot on, man, spot on. Glasshouse no go still care. Even now that WAFCON 2025 date is still unsure. This too will pass.
No body is blaming the coach because is a white man. If finidi or Boso lost three matches in a tournament their life will be in danger.
In women football in Nigeria? When Falcons naturally surpasses expectations on the continent more often than not and suddenly took the world by storm at last year’s women’s world cup? As it stands, Waldrum has raised the ego of the Falcons. Not even Bosso or Finidi can accomplish such feat in, again, WOMEN FOOTBALL. So, the sky will never fall down on Waldrum. He’s made Falcons fierce and got that fear factor in global women football.
For all of Banda’s Olympic feat for Zambia women football, I don’t see any player in Falcons team scoring a hat trick in any female football and Super falcons going on to lose that match. Banda scored hat tricks in 3 Olympic football matches and Zambia still went ahead to lose all 3 of them.
Falcons are steadily making progress and no one will retard that. Bosso has been given several international tournaments to improve with no fear factor in ALL HIS TEAMS. What did we get? Promoted to under 23! So much for progression.
Hahahaha….how dare you talk ill of an attacking team like Zambia with their 1-man bomber (yes 1-MAN). Zambia that attacked Spain at the last world cup and got a 5-0 beating…? Zambia that attacked Japan at the last world cup and also got another 5-0 beating….?
Zambia that attacked brazil at the last Olympics and lost 1-0….?
Please, please, please…..dont talk about our Zambia like that biko.
Let Finidi and Bosso even qualify for the Olympics and go face Brazil, Spain and Japan first.
If Waldrum had lost 3 qualifying matches he wouldn’t have qualified for any of AWCON, WC and Olympics and his life would have long been in danger.
Stan, Waldrum is not perfect but overall, he is raised the profile of the Super Falcons