Nigeria’s female national team, Super Falcons have landed in Austria, as they commence preparations for the upcoming Aisha Buhari Invitational Football Competition in Lagos, megasportsarena.com reports.
The Falcons’ delegation of 26 players, alongside technical and administrative staff, quickly moved into their abode at Event Hotel Pyramide in Vienna, with coach of the side, Randy Waldrum promising to harness his players’ different qualities and abilities to get a stronger team.
Waldrum continues inviting players of Nigerian origin born abroad, as he seeks to improved on his side’s shaky for at the recent UWNT Summer Series in the United States of America, where the Falcons drew with Portugal, but lost to Jamaica and the hosts, USA.
Before that point, few Nigerian fans had heard of Yewande Balogun, Onyinyechi Zogg, Nicole Payne and Michelle Alozie, but they formed part of a group that bonded fabulously with foreign-based and home-grown professionals, in what signaled an interesting future for the team.
They will now aim to make the best of an eight-day training camp in Vienna, as part of their preparations for the Aisha Buhari six-nation invitational that will also feature Ghana’s Black Queens, Cameroon’s Indomitable Lionesses and Banyana Banyana of South Africa, as well as Morocco and Mali.
They will all tango in a celebratory atmosphere come September for a glittering trophy named in honour of Nigeria’s First Lady, Dr (Mrs) Aisha Buhari, with the Falcons entering the contest as one of only seven countries that have qualified for every edition of the FIFA Women’s World Cup since the competition was launched in 1991.
All eyes are already on the Falcons, who have also featured in three editions of the Olympic Games, as the countdown gets tighter for the invitational, with the Nigerian lasses insisting the trophy will surely remain with them after the weeklong exchange of healthy hostilities.
The Falcons, who have won all but two of the 11 editions of the African Women Cup of Nations, since the first edition held in 1998, will have to be wary of South Africa’s Banyana Banyana, who have played in every single edition of the AWCON well, and have also played in two Olympics.
Banyana were the runners-up to the Falcons in the last edition of the AWCON in Ghana in 2018, while that country’s team, The Black Queens, have played in 10 out of the 11 editions as well as in three of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The Queens were runners-up to the Falcons in the inaugural AWCON in Nigeria in 1998, while Cameroon’s Lionesses lost by a lone goal to Nigeria in the 2016 final at Stade Ahmadu Ahidjo in Yaoundé.
They have also participated in every edition of the AWCON and played at two FIFA Women’s World Cups, including a second-round berth, while Mali have played at seven editions of the AWCON and are considered a very strong team in the WAFU A region, with Morocco also rated one of the strongest teams in the North African region and have two AWCON outings.
