WAFCON 2022: NFF 2014-2022 Failure Personified

It’s no longer news the Super Falcons, the most successful of Nigeria’s national teams, lost to Shepolopolo of Zambia in the a third-place match after gallantly holding down host country Morocco for 120 minutes with nine players in the just-concluded WAFCON.

For the first time in a very long time Africa’s most outstanding women’s national team, the Super Falcons of Nigeria, have returned home from the WAFCON without a medal.

But our consolation is that they qualified for upcoming Australia-New Zealand FIFA Women’s World Cup next year.

The free fall of Nigeria Football in all ramifications continues unabated and the NFF Class of 2014-2022 added another feather to their cap as failure Personified by lack of planning and poor vision for female football development in Nigeria.

The NFF embarked on an inglorious journey of contracting incompetent foreign coaches for our female national teams.

The success of female football in Nigeria can be attributed to the progenitors of the game, patriotic Nigerians like Elder Eddington Kuejubola, Princess Bola Jegede and Hon. Alhaja Omidiran, while the pioneer coaches of the National female teams were Ismaila Mabo, Paul Hamilton of blessed memory, James Peters and Godwin Izilien.

Even if the argument is that these coaches are old and have passed their prime what about the young coaches who worked under them as assistants?

Where is Omagbemi, Maureen Madu, Anne Chiejine and others?

What is wrong in investing the money being spent on these incompetent foreign coaches in training and retraining these ex- Super Falcons players for the female national teams?

Nigeria Football certainly cannot be run from September 2022 in this same old order.

The time for change is now and the Footballers bloc is here to add value to the game for the benefit of all Nigerians.

BY HARRISON JALLA, Chairman Project 2022 Task Force.