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Madugu Blames Missed Chances, Errors as Super Falcons Miss World Cup
Nigeria’s senior women’s national team head coach Justin Madugu has blamed missed opportunities, individual errors and lapses in concentration for Nigeria’s failure to qualify for the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The Falcons suffered a playoff defeat to South Africa in Casablanca, ending their hopes of reaching the tournament and marking the first time Nigeria will miss the FIFA Women’s World Cup since the competition was inaugurated in 1991.
Madugu apologised to Nigerians following the setback, saying disappointing the country was never the team’s intention.
“I would like to apologise to Nigerians over our inability to make it to the World Cup. We are very sorry. It was not our intention. We came, did the best that we could do, but our best wasn’t enough,” Madugu said.
“We are very sorry for that and we take full responsibility for everything that happened.”
The coach said the Falcons entered the decisive encounter determined to secure victory but failed to convert their chances, while defensive mistakes gave South Africa opportunities to punish them.
“We came into the game determined to make sure we gave our all and tried as much as possible to win. From the way the ladies played, they gave it their all too,” he said.
“We had chances, but conversion was another problem and we made some errors at the back. They capitalised on that and got the goals.”
Madugu said individual decision-making errors and a brief loss of concentration ultimately proved costly, insisting the Falcons could have avoided the outcome by sticking to their game plan and keeping things simple.
“It’s something that we really regret. We feel sorry about because it was more of individual errors in decision-making that accounted for what happened,” he said.
“We had the game under control and then had a momentary loss of concentration. If we had kept to the game plan, just done the basics and simple things, I think we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this situation.”
Madugu also defended his decision to deploy Michelle Alozie at left-back, pointing to her previous performances in the position.
The coach noted that Alozie had been named Player of the Match in one of the Falcons’ earlier games and argued that her ability to play at left-back was not the issue against South Africa.
“It’s unfortunate that it had to happen the way it happened. Even in the left-back position, Michelle was given Player of the Match in one of the games we played,” he said.
“Like I said, it’s not about the ability to play in that position, but it had to do with individual positioning and errors. If we take the right decisions and do the simple things that we needed, these things were avoidable.”
Madugu admitted that Nigeria’s lack of clinical finishing was another major factor in their failure to qualify.
He said the Falcons created several opportunities but were unable to convert enough of them, a weakness that ultimately proved decisive in the high-stakes playoff.
“Of course, we will say we have a goal-scoring problem because we have not been clinical in front of goal. We create several chances but we are very wasteful with the opportunities that always come our way,” Madugu said.
“If we are clinical in front of goal, we would have scored a lot of goals.”
With their World Cup hopes over, the Super Falcons will now shift their focus to the 2028 Olympic qualifiers, which are scheduled to begin in October.