By Daily Sports on December 29, 2019
Asisat Oshoala has stated that Nigeria did not play with the best team in the Tokyo 2020 Caf Women's Olympic Games Qualifiers, following a third successive botched campaign in October.
The African champions made an exciting start to the year with a third-place finish at the Chinese Invitational in January, before an enterprising debut at the Cyprus Women's Cup a month later.
Thereafter, Thomas Dennerby's side held their own against Canada in April's international friendly in Spain before another superb display to win a maiden Wafu Women's Cup of Nations title in May.
"In the Olympic Qualifiers, we did our best to qualify but obviously, we didn't have our best team," Oshoala told Goal.
"Our best team didn't play the qualifying games. I was there and we missed a lot of players from the Women's World Cup who didn't feature in the Olympic qualifying matches.
"I think that If we are going to be building a team and really wanted to go to the Olympics, the players that we had were not experienced enough.
"There were a lot of young players, maybe they were trying to build the team but it thinks experience counts a lot in games that involve two legs and then it's a knockout.
"A lot of experienced players were not part of the team and it actually added to the reason why we didn't qualify.
"We also had a lot of younger players coming into the team and the coach trying to build around them. We were so unlucky not to qualify."
"We wanted to give 100 per cent and wanted an opportunity to showcase ourselves again but not all the girls were on the list to come for the game and it was a bit difficult outing for us.
"If we have had the same roaster from the World Cup for the qualifiers, I can say we have a 90 per cent chance to qualify. I don't know why the roaster changed, although we had different coaches. (Goal)
•PHOTO: Asisat Oshoala
Source Daily Sports
Posted December 29, 2019
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