2023 FIFA WWC: Coach Waldrum remains confident in Super Falcons’ triumph amidst NFF challenges

The Super Falcons will play their first game of the 2023 World Cup against Canada on the 21st of July before Australia and Ireland later in the group stage

The Super Falcon’s head coach, Randy Waldrum, has revealed that his ladies are ready to give their best in their first game against Canada to start their campaign on a positive note, Soccernet. ng reports.

The American tactician has been at loggerheads with the Nigerian Football Federation over the issue of salaries and unpaid bonuses.

Despite these issues, the 66-year-old is confident that his troops will perform well in their first game against the Olympic champions, Canada, in 7 days.

With the start of the ninth edition of the Women’s World Cup just six days away, Nigeria will compete in Group B along with Canada, Australia, and Ireland.

The Super Falcons and six other teams have participated in every edition of the tournament since its first inauguration back in 1991, which was hosted in China.

They had the best outing in the 1999 edition when they reached the last eight of the competition. Since that historic achievement, they have made it out of the group stage once in the subsequent five editions.

However, with the Super Falcons playing their first game of the tournament against Canada in a week, the team head coach has maintained the reason why the Falcons must get a positive result in their first game against the CONCACAF representative.

Speaking during the team’s training session in their camp in Australia, shared on the Super Falcons Twitter page,  Waldrum spoke about the ladies’ readiness to put all the efforts into the first game

It has been very good, camp going on well, the players are working hard, and the talent level is good and ok I’m extremely happy.

We are confident and we have talents, we always said that, and these ten days in training, they have been organized where we want to be organized, especially defensively. We would have every opportunity to be successful in the Cup and I believe in the players.

Just a couple of knocks and a couple of injuries, just a little bit concerned with some players, outside of that, they are healthy and it’s all about our performances and how we play

I am confident, all the focus has been on Canada, quite frankly, and we know how important the first match is going to be to us and we need to get something out of it.

It doesn’t mean it is the end of our group if we don’t but it will be a very big start for us to take something out of that match. I’m confident the players can do it and the more important thing is we can speak individually to the players so they are confident that they will take something out of the match.

Watch the video here:

🗣️Our head coach Randy Waldrum shares his optimism ahead of our Women’s World Cup opener against Canada after a few days of training in Gold Coast 🇳🇿 💪#SoarSuperFalcons #FIFAWWC       #TeamNigeria pic.twitter.com/PLGtsHd37B

— NGSuper_Falcons (@NGSuper_Falcons) July 13, 2023

The team will play Australia six days later after their match against Canada and the Republic of Ireland four days after.