Super Falcons defender Onome Ebi has disclosed that the absence of enough foreign base professionals cost the team a place at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games.
Nigeria lost opportunity to feature at the games after playing out a 1-1 draw with their Ivorian counterparts at the Agege township after the first meeting ended goalless in Abidjan.
The nine-time continental champions went into both ties at back of the departure of their Swede coach Thomas Denneby and also fielded only five foreign-based players over the two legs back in September.
Onome Ebi who spoke with Brila FM in a live Instagram live session, however, believed it would have been a different ball game if Super Falcons had paraded the entire foreign base professionals.
“Definitely I think so because if all the professionals are called, I think we could have qualified, we have been playing together for a long time.”
“It not easy just bring in new players and blend just like that, it’s football, you have to train together for a long time in order to understand yourselves.”
“It’s not easy for new players to just fit in just like that, we had about six new players, it’s not that easy to blend them together.”
“And I think if we had all the professionals and the coach will also have a lot of choices to make and we would have qualified”. She said.
Falcons previously played at 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympics football events, but have now missed out on 2012, 2016 and 2020 Olympic tournaments.
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