Despite scoring three of Nigeria’s six goals against Equatorial Guinea, Super Falcons hat trick hero, Asisat Oshoala has maintained that team victory comes first ahead of individual accolades.
When asked if her performance against Equatorial Guinea ranks among the best the China based forward said: “This tournament is not about individual performance for me, the most important thing is to get the world cup ticket and I think I decided to be more of a team player because I care more about my team and nation than personal glory and individual accolades.
“I think with my experience, the team victory is more important and I’m happy with my self, my teammates and I think Nigerians are happy which is the most important thing,” she added.
The Nigerian forward opened her 2018 AWCON account with a hat trick which earned her the Total Woman of the Match award and Oshoala agrees that “getting the goals today (Saturday) brings confidence but everyone has confidence in all the strikers in the team because each game, we have two or three different strikers scoring goals.
“We don’t have to depend on Asisat alone because we have Francisca (Ordega), Desire (Oparanozie), Anam (Imo), Ajibade (Rasheedat) and this is very good for us because the team as a whole is confident.” Adding that “I might be like a plus for the players, but all the strikers in the team are goal scorers so we have confidence in each other.”
Talking about the game against Zambia in which she missed glaring goal scoring chances and could have scored at least 4 goals, Oshoala said: “it’s normal as a professional player to want to get goals in some games but what I believe with my experience is that in a game where you miss chances as a striker, you just have to keep giving people chances which was the decision I made.
“At some point I knew I wasn’t going to score any longer because I really do not struggle to score goals so I just had to tell myself it’s time to give assists which was what I did; but like I always say, the team victory is more important than individual accolades.”
It was her first real outing of the tournament some will say as the reigning Queen of African football picked up the Total Woman of the Match award and here’s what she had to say.
“It is a very good feeling to get three points today, obviously that’s the most important thing. I’m also happy to be on the score sheet; my first goal(s) in this tournament. I’ve been working so hard so I think I deserve this and I’m grateful to my team mates for the work everyone put in and the determination even after losing the first game to South Africa.
“We didn’t give up, we spoke to ourselves and told ourselves we need to show that we are champions. I think we’ve actually improved so far and today was a great outing for us.”
