Nigeria Content Online

The
Super Falcons are billed to play a warm-up match with an Under-16 boys
team today in continuation of the team’s preparations for this year’s
FIFA Women’s World Cup. The match which comes up at the practice pitch
of the National Stadium in Abuja, serves as an avenue for the team’s
coaching crew to gauge the performance of the players.

Explaining the
reason for the decision to play with a boys team, the team’s chief
coach Eucharia Uche said: “It would be an opportunity for us to be able
to evaluate their performance, see how well they can play together and
we would then take it up from there.”

The Super Falcons
are currently on a two-week camping exercise in Abuja, but none of the
team’s stars to last year’s African Women Championship in South Africa
are present in camp as those invited are players who did not have the
opportunity of taking part in the AWC. So far, of the 40 players that
were invited to the two-week training programme specially designed to
integrate them with the other Falcons, 21 have reported to camp,
including six overseas based players. They are Emueje Oghiablef of
Russian club side Rossiyanka, KPV of Finland’s Funsho Alake and her
clubmates Obende Biodun and Hadijat Aliyu, Oyewusi Olushola of OB
Odense of Denmark, as well as Sarah Micheal of Swedish club Oroedro.
Also expected to fly into the country are the duo of Shemola Akinloshe
and Hope Orieka who are both flying in from Turkey.

Delighted with turnout

However, despite
the absence of some of the players called up to camp, the Super Falcons
coach expressed delight at the turnout of players.

“It is just a
two-week training camp exercise which is turning out to be fruitful
because the girls, especially the foreign based players are responding
very well to training,” she continued.

“I am pleased with
the turnout. It would give us the opportunity to access some players
who could not make it to the AWC last year.”

In a related
development, the Finnish Football Association has accepted to pitch the
Finland women’s national side against the Super Falcons in a friendly
billed for May; a situation that will see the African champions testing
their preparedness for the World Cup. And Uche is delighted with the
news.

“It would be an
opportunity for us to be able to gauge how prepared we are,” she
continued. “You know that the Scandinavian countries are known to have
a more developed women football organization.”

Arrangements are also underway to have the women’s national teams of
Hungary and Norway squaring up against the Super Falcons ahead of the
World Cup which gets underway in June in Germany.