Exclusive News
After losing seven matches in a row, Super Falcons Coach Randy Marlon Waldrum was quoted as saying that he is not bothered about the streak of poor results but the performance of the team in all the matches. Quoting his words, the American College Coach said “Our Performances in those matches are what is important and not necessarily the results. We played better in three of those matches”. He evidenced on performance rather than results.
Box 18 totally disagree with the Coach and his performance with team. If no one is telling him, that good results to the build up of a major tournament like the World Cup has a way of motivating the players to such tournaments. No one is playing down on performance, but Nigerians are very interested in results of those matches. Moreover, the NFF has invested much in the matches and deserve good results.
One needs to remind the American that the Super Falcons is the most successful Women Team in the continent. It has the singular record of eleven Women’s Africa Cup of Nations titles. The team is also the only women’s national team from the Confederation of African Football to have reached the quarterfinals in both Women’s World Cup and Football at the Summer Olympics.
They are also one of the few teams in the world to have qualified for every edition of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, with their best performance at the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup where they reached the quarterfinals.
Randy, many thought was engaged to move the team from being African giants to World beaters. But, with the series of loses in the last seven matches starting from the Semifinals penalty lost to Morocco at the last Africa Women Nations Cup on 18 July 2022, then the third place lost to Zambia
22 July at the AWCON. The second time the team will return from the Tournament without winning a medal.
Since then, there was a four zero lost to USA on 3 September 2022, and another two goals to one lost to the same team on 6 September 2022. On 6 of October 2022, the Super Falcons lost 2-0 to Japan.
They have started 2023 with a 1-0 to Mexico on 15 February and another 1-0 lost to Colombia on
21 February.
The credentials of Randy Waldrum does not show the quality of a coach who can turn the Super Falcons around. His highest job was in Trinidad and Tobago, where he was was fired in 2016, before he was given the Super Falcons job in 2020. All through his career in USA, he has been a College Coach since 1982 when he started with Austin College. He was also at Texas Wesleyan University, University of Tulsa, Bayol University and University of Notre Dame where he spent 15 seasons. With all these, Randy has no major laurels attached to his name.
If we are playing Canada on 21 July, Australia on 27 July and Republic of Ireland on 31 July in Australia at Women World Cup, the qualities I saw in the Coach may be turn out our worst in recent times.
There is nothing wrong for the NFF to attached some technical men to the team to give notes to the Coach, as it is very evident that he does not know the players till date.
