By Patrick Omorodion
Former Chief Coach of the senior national female football team, the Super Falcons, Godwin Izilein has described Nigeria’s outing at the recently held Women African Nations Cup, WAFCON, in Morocco as a disaster for the nation.
Still seething with anger over the Super Falcons loss of the third place match to Zambia, Izilein said if Nigeria presents the same team at the FIFA World Cup later in the year, they will be slaughtered by the much more prepared and better European teams.
“Our standard has gone low. Even the Zambian team that beat our girls are nothing to write home about”, he said, stressing that, “the only people trying a little bit to copy what Nigeria used to be are the South Africans”.
“I just finished watching the European girls, they will slaughter our team except there is an immediate change.
What is paining me is that they (the NFF) don’t want to hear anything about indigenous coaches because they can’t negotiate with us. The foreigner they brought has nothing to offer, they just brought him to siphon our money”, the Edo-born coach said.
According to Izilein, Nigerians expect that even if the team are not winning, the standard attained in the past should be maintained and not “allowing Zambia that I can’t remember playing a good game beat us”.
He queried the rationale behind keeping the much younger players on the bench and what Onome Ebi was still doing in the team.
“How can Onome still be in the team, she was in my team in 2004. They kept the young girls on the bench, doing what ? The game is for the young and versatile players and not for tired legs”, he said, stressing that “even pregnant women will do better than what our girls did in Morocco”.
