Nigeria coach Randy Wadrum was beaming from ear to ear= on Thursday after his side upset co-hosts Australia to go to of Group B at the Women’s World cup.
He spoke after the 3-1 shock win in Brisbane which leaves Nigeria needing only one more point from their last group game to progress through to the next round.
ON HOW NIGERIA TURNED AROUND THE RESULT AND WHAT WAS SAID DURING THE BREAK
“I think two things happened. One is, after giving up the first goal before halftime, we were able to respond and get it back. I think that was huge from a confidence standpoint. We tried sort out a little bit of a problem that Van Egmont was causing for us in midfield, finding a lot of pockets of space. And then it was just a matter of telling the players, you know, go for it. Don't be afraid to go out. I think the changes that we made worked out, the subs that we put in changed the game as well.
ON BEATING ONE OF THE CO-HOSTS AND SHOCKING THE TOURNAMENT
“I think they're still singing and dancing right now, I can't get into the change room and get a word in edgewise. Obviously an amazing feeling. And I'm so proud of these players, because so many people didn't believe, so many didn't believe in me, didn't believe in the team. And the one thing that we've done is we've talked about believing in each other, and the strength of our success has got to be in the unity of the team. And to think that we've come in here and gotten two results against two top, top teams in the world says a lot, not only our ability but to just the heart and the competitive desire that the team has. I told them after the match, ‘keep believing, right? Keep believing in yourself. Because great things can happen for teams, when you really fightfor each other’. It's not always the best talent that wins. You know, sometimes it's the best team, the team that works best together and we're enjoying the journey. We know there's still work to do. So we'll enjoy it tonight and get our recovery going tomorrow because it was a very, very taxing game on us physically. And then we'll do our best to get ready for another very good opponent with Ireland.”
ON THE GAME APPROACH
“We've tried to, in the amount of time we've had the team, organise them collectively as a team in the way we want to defend. I know the Nigerian fans want to see flair and attacking football all the time. And we love that quality of our players. I think you saw that in some of the individual goals we scored tonight. But at this level, when you're playing this kind of competition, you have to be collectively good defensively. We cleared a lot of balls out and that's the key is trying to keep teams out of the most dangerous areas, and we dodged a couple of bullets as well, to be fair, but you know, I think that is part of the way we know we have to play to get results out of this group. So, I am again just amazed at how well they have taken to task, the way we tactically are wanting them to play right now, because we haven't had the time that a lot of other teams have had together.”
ON ONLY USING STAR STRIKER ASISAT OSHOALA AS A SUBSTITUTE
“We've tried to be careful and manage her time. She's come to the World Cup off of a long injury.
And so when she got here, we knew we had to use her in a way that, you know, we keep her in, don't get her out for the entire tournament. And we played her longer than we probably wanted to against Canada. So we had to manage her minutes today. But I thought she did a great job when she came on. She's such a force physically, she's a handful. You saw every long ball, even when she's isolated by herself, she can create problems. And the third goal was massive. She's like any other player, she wants to be on all the time and I know she was disappointed. But when we explained the reasoning behind it. Today, I told her before the match, ‘be ready for the last 30 minutes and come on and make a difference. I just have a good feeling’. And fortunately, that worked out.”
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