Former Assistant Secretary at the technical department of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), James Peters, yesterday blamed the women national team’s (Super Falcons) failure to qualify for the football event of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games to the inexperience of their technical crew.
Peters, a former Super Eagles coach, said the Falcons 1-2 loss to their Equatorial Guinean counterparts at the weekend in Bata was because the technical crew, led by Christopher Danjuma, lacked the capacity to motivate the players to bring out their best.
He warned that while it was right for the young coaches to be given the responsibility to coach national teams, it was also reasonable for the NFF to attach some of the experienced coaches to assist them, stressing that a technically equipped coach would have guided the girls to victory, especially when there were lucky to have scored first in the away leg.
“It is good to have experienced coaches to help the young ones, not necessarily by sitting on the bench, but to spy for them and design tactics that will assist the team. This is something we did in the past.
“The truth is that if they want to assist the country they should do so… they know what to do and the records are there. I am not lying. They should forget these petty attitude and tribalism, which they are using now to determine who becomes a coach at the national teams. It is having a very big negative effect on the teams.”
On the sack of the former Super Falcons’ coach, Edwin Okon, after the Women World Cup in Canada and its effects on the team, Peters said the team would have done better if the NFF had allowed him to conclude the qualification series for the
