FIFA U17 Women World Cup Qualifier: Blame NFF Not Coaches If….

FIFA U17 Women World Cup Qualifier: Blame NFF Not Coaches If….

By Niyi Busari

It is common sense to learn from the mistakes one committed and try as much as possible not to repeat same when the situation arises again.

The Nigeria Women U17 National Team will on the 28th February, 2020 slug it out with Guinea in their quest for the FIFA Women's U17 World Cup in India.

In 2018, the Nigeria Football Federation appointed Coach Bala Nkiyu as the head coach of the Flamingos just 20 days to the crucial encounter against the Cameroonian U17 Women National Team.

Despite his hard work and prayers, the team failed to qualify for the world cup as Cameroon bundled out the Flamingos.

On the two-legged games, Cameroon recorded a 2-2 draw in Nigeria but the 1-1 draw in Yaounde was not enough, hence Cameroon U17 Women National team picked the ticket at the expense of the most populous African country.

After Nigeria crashed out, the NFF relieved Bala Nkiyu of his duty as the head coach of the Flamingos.

Fast forward to 2020, the same Flamingos will in three weeks face Guinea in the 2020 FIFA World Cup qualifier in a two-legged affair.

In not less than 24 days to the encounter, the NFF has not appointed a substantive head coach but has named assistant coaches, invited and imposed 21 players on the appointed coaches.

According to the Director, Technical Department of the NFF, Bitrus Bewarang, the federation handed the appointment of all the age grade national team coaches to PriceWater as consultant.

As at the time of compiling this report, the stand-in-coach of the Flamingos, Olowookere Bankole do not know if he will remain as stand-in-head coach or assistant when Nigeria faces Guinea on 28th February, 2020.

Watching their training on Tuesday at the FIFA Goal Project, Package B, Moshood Abiola Stadium, Abuja, some of the girls though look young and eligible to play U17 but the coach spent most of the time directing some of the players on how to control, pass and positioning on and off the ball.

Olowookere, a hard-working coach who loves working under pressure admitted that the time is short but expressed confidence in his lads and assured Nigerians that his girls will beat Guinea irrespective of who the head coach is at the time of the match.

However, if we fail to progress like in 2018 due to lack of proper planning, the NFF who delays the preparations for the qualifiers, appoints the assistant coaches and imposed the invited players on them will turn back to put the blame on the coaches, sack them and continue in office.

In 2019, during the African Nations Cup in Egypt, the chieftains of the Egypt Football Association resigned because the Pharaoh of Egypt failed to win the AFCON 2019. When will our administrators borrow a leaf from that? It is high time we learnt to do the right thing.

Every year, the NFF gets funds worth hundreds of million of US Dollars from FIFA and CAF for Women Football Development. The question is, where are these funds? What women development programme are they spending it on?

The Nigeria Women Amateur League which kicked off yesterday in Edo state is played by just SIX teams (Ubakala Queens FC of Umuahia, Niger Ratel FC of Makurdi, Kwara Ladies FC of llorin, Omidiran Babes FC of Osogbo and Moje Queens FC (Erin ile) in a round-robin format while the topmost teams gain promotion to the Nigeria Women Professional League - second tier league.

Is this what we referred to as LEAGUE?

When are we going to learn how to do the right thing at the right time?