Paris 2024: Randy Waldrum craves for changes to make Super Falcons world best

By Oyediji Oluwaseun Babatunde

Head of Nigeria women’s team Randy Waldrum believes a lot of issues must to be addressed for the Super Falcons to be able to punch above their weights at the world stage.

The nine-time African champions bowed out of the Paris 2024 Olympics after 1-0 losses to heavyweights, Brazil and Spain before a 3-1 humiliation from Japan ended their campaign at the women’s football tournament for the first time since 2008.

A lot of those issues include staggered travel arrangements that leaves players arriving in batches for training camp, visa troubles, lack of an advanced schedule and payment issues.

And Waldrum feelssays to make the Super Falcons one of the top teams in the world, changes will be necessary.

“I don’t want to revive that. But I would say this, and I don’t mean it in a bad way towards the Federation: I do think that we can do with changes in some of this,” Waldrum told ESPN.

He continued: “It may come down to finances and that part I’m not involved with because I don’t know the financial situation of the NFF, and how it works with the government. I can tell you from a coaching perspective, I’ll give you a good example.

“When we played Cameroon in the Olympic qualifiers, we had a 10-day FIFA international window. But we ended up traveling most of the window. Some of the players were even a couple of days late. We had to come to Nigeria first.

“So we fly from Europe, the US wherever our players are playing and we fly into Nigeria, then we have to turn around a day and a half later, and fly to Cameroon because we’re playing a game like three days or four days into the window.

“Well, what happens to players? When you fly in, and you’re traveling 15 hours of travel, your body needs time to recover. We got into Nigeria, had to have some time to recover on that first day and a half, then we had time for one practice, which was still when we were in recovery mode.

“And then we have to catch a plane the next day, at midnight to fly to Cameroon, and we get there at 4am in the morning, the day before the game, and we play a game at four o’clock in the afternoon. Well, our bodies never recovered from the travel.

“If we decide to ever really commit to this team to make it a top 10 team in the world, these are the kinds of things that we have to do a better job of. And I’m not putting that blame on anybody because I don’t know the reasons behind it.

“But as a coach and as players, these are things that sometimes we have hard times understanding because we know it would have made the most sense to go from here straight to Cameroon, rested a day and then had two full days to train and then a day before the match. Instead, on those four days before the match, we’re traveling right all over the world.”

After the Paris 2024 Olympics experience, the new step for the Super Falcons is preparation for the 2024 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) in Morocco next year.

The question on people’s mind is whether Waldrum will lead the team to the next tournament despite merging the role as Nigeria’s coach with that of University of Pittsburgh.