THE Super Falcons are heading to the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia in disharmony, with the relationship between their head coach and the Nigeria Football Federation on the rocks.
The World Cup begins on July 20, with the Super Falcons playing their first match against Canada the day after, but their preparations have been marred by a war of words between Waldrum and his employers.
Waldrum told the ‘On the Whistle’ podcast that his plans were hampered by the NFF’s interference in his team selection, inadequate funding and other problems.
“We were supposed to have camp before the World Cup in Nigeria. I was promised three weeks of camp. The first week and a half was just going to be more local players,” the 66-year-old American said.
“Then we were supposed to have 10 more days where we brought all the Super Falcons in and anybody I picked from the local camp, I could mix into that 10 days, look at them together, and then make the decision on the 23 that would fly to Australia.
“Right before we were getting ready to come to camp, they cancelled the camp. They said there was no money, [they said] ‘we don’t have the money to do this, FIFA makes us book airline tickets for every player to Australia [and it] has to be business class, instead of just coach’. It was expensive and they didn’t have money, so anyway they cancelled that camp.”
Waldrum also explained that his refusal to call up a home-based goalkeeper as requested by the NFF cost him his assistant manager Lauren Gregg who was cut from the technical crew.
“Finally, we got to a point where I said, ‘look it’s in my contract that I pick my players.’ and Immediately, as soon as I said that they said, OK, you pick who you want, but now Lauren Gregg can’t come… so now I’m going into the World Cup short-staffed.
“I’m trying to plan and prepare practices. If I have Lauren, I can practice a certain way, I can split things up, because she knows how I work. If I don’t have Lauren, I’ve got to do it myself because my Nigerian assistants, I haven’t worked with enough. They don’t know me well enough to handle things the way I want.”
Waldrum also questioned the NFF’s transparency over the $960,000 FIFA grant given to every federation whose team qualified for the World Cup.
“I’ve just finally gotten to a point where I’m like ‘okay, we’re going with what we have’. The good news is I think our team is in a good place, they’re in good spirits, they’re unified, they’re as together as we’ve ever been. So I feel good about that,” Waldrum, who doubles as Pittsburgh University women’s football head coach, added.
“My issues with the federation are my issues. We’ll make sure when I get there, the team understands, let’s just focus on our job, it has nothing to do with you, and we’ll do the best we can with it. But I’m not going to be quiet anymore.
“The other side of this is, I have a real close contact in the US that is very connected and on some of the boards at FIFA. This person told me that, in October, every country was given $960,000 from FIFA to prepare for the World Cup. Where is that money?
“If Nigeria got it in October, why didn’t we have a camp in November?
“When we went to Japan [in October], we flew in and had a day’s rest, and then played the game and then went home. Some of our players didn’t arrive until the morning before the game, five players that were going to start for me, arrived the night before the game, and the game was a four o’clock game, and they travelled 16 hours on a plane.
“Then we play Japan, and then we go home. We wasted the last five days of that window to train. So the question I have is where is this money?
“The other thing I found out from my FIFA connection is that if countries don’t have the money to buy the business class tickets for everybody, FIFA would front that money and buy those tickets and then just deduct it from the money you get from FIFA after the World Cup.
“So there’s no excuse of saying ‘We didn’t have money to buy tickets, so we couldn’t have camp’ but these are the kinds of things that the people in Nigeria don’t question… Where does $960,000 go? Why aren’t we prepared properly?”
Waldrum also insisted that, compared to other World Cup-bound teams, Nigeria’s technical crew is inadequate in terms of personnel.
He said: “FIFA also allows your technical staff to have up to 22 people, well we’ve only got about 11 on our staff. If FIFA will pay bonuses for up to 22 people, why don’t we have 22 people, why don’t I have an analyst, why don’t we have scouts?
““The US right now has scouts in Europe, watching teams play these exhibitions, just in case they face them at the World Cup. We don’t even have scouts going with us to Australia. I don’t have anybody to scout games if we were to get out of our group. I don’t have anybody to scout games in our group.”
Nigeria are in a tough-looking Group B with co-hosts Australia, Olympic champions Canada and Republic of Ireland.
