France 2019: Dennerby promises to take Nigeria’s best legs

Super Falcons’s Head Coach Thomas Dennerby has said that the team will go to this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup finals in France with the best legs available. 

Speaking to thenff.com on the necessity of the recent domestic camp, the coach who is delighted with the maximum support of the Nigeria Football Federation for his entire programme ahead of the World Cup, insisted that in order to select the best players, there is need to give as many good players as possible the opportunity to show what they can do. 

“We have different targets, of course. The first target is to find really good players that will be in the first list that we will send to FIFA. We have to be very sure we have the right players. It’s very important that you are one hundred per cent sure that you have picked the ones that you really want. Also, we have a camp in Spain at the beginning of April where we will play the Canada Women National team and it is very important that some of the players in this camp come to Spain.”

Dennerby, who led the domestic players to third place finish in the maiden edition of the WAFU Cup Tournament in 2018, noted that some of the players will leave the team eventually and the domestic camp offers opportunity to know who has the ability.

“Soon, we probably need to change some of the players in the National Team and when the time comes we have to know who is best suitable. There is a lot of good reason for having the domestic camp.”  

The Nigeria Football Federation has availed the Super Falcons with the opportunity of playing six games so far this year in preparation for the FIFA World Cup in France.

Speaking on the team’s preparation so far, Dennerby insisted the team has been getting better with every game, expressing hope that they will have a good performance at the World Cup.

“If you look at the first game we played this year in China against the Chinese Women National team, we had a good first half but the players became tired in the second half and I know the reason for that. However, having observed that Romanian defenders were slow from their first game, we tried to supply our attackers faster in the second game and won 4-1.

“Coming to Cyprus, with the good quality of the opponents we showed some improvement from the first tournament. We were unlucky in the first game against Austria with a player (goalkeeper Tochukwu Oluehi) picking a red card in the 6th minute. We played with only ten players for 84 minutes but we really did well in the game. The girls showed a lot of good attitude. But the good thing is that we got two wins in Cyprus and the girls showed strong attitude, they were quick, nice running, hardworking, good decision –making and all these are necessary to boost their confidence.”