Super Falcons’ Thomas Dennerby, following confirmation of the Super Falcons 23-woman squad for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, has revealed his optimism about his team’s chances of progressing to the knockout phase of the tournament.
“If we look at the team I think we have a good chance to get to the knockout phase. That is our target,” the 59 year-old Swede began.
“But if we get to the knockout stage anything can happen because I do not think Nigeria will be the favorites so that puts pressure on the other teams.
“I think we have a really strong team and some other teams will be aware of that. We have a good spirit in the team and a few more days before the tournament starts so we are satisfied for the moment,” he added.
Having participated in different invitational tournaments, competitions and played different warm-up games since the turn of the year, Dennerby tells us about how the team has improved and the work being put in to perfect the preparation for the World Cup.
“I think we have found a good strategy that works for the defence. We work more now with finding a proper way through the midfield to serve our very speedy forwards with good penetration balls or playing it over the opponent’s defensive line.
“We have also been working a lot on where and how to run, where to play the crucial passes and ensuring good preparation for good attacking plays,” he added.
Dennerby then proceeded to take us through the process which saw the final 23 players emerge.
“Usually the head coach has the last word but this time I and the technical staff (which includes four coaches) had good and long discussions with strong arguments for different players.
“When you have these discussions you’re always feeling very good because then you know it’s not only your own feelings. This is because sometimes you can have good feelings about a player’s performance and not feel the same way about another player while your colleagues say otherwise. So this discussion by the technical staff was extremely important to see different sides of the coin,” he explained.
“In the end, I’m feeling very comfortable with the team and I think we have really good, experienced, young, quick, strong, technical players with different qualities and abilities. I think we can create a really good team out of this place,” the 2018 AWCON winning coach concluded.
