The African champions had earlier played a 0-0 draw in Abdijan and needed to win outrightly to move to the next round but the Ivorians managed to scale through on away goals rule.
Nigeria last played in the female football event of the Olympics at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and failed to feature at the London Olympics in 2012 and the last edition Rio 2016.
It is no longer a secret that other female footballing national teams are catching up with the Super Falcons who have reigned for long on the African continent with little competition.
And after uninspiring World Cup performances where other African Countries impressed and after being knocked out by Cameroon on the route to the Olympics in 2011, it was evident that others were catching up.
However, the events that led to the Super Falcons absence in Rio and the soon to be held Tokyo 2020 is a cluster and combination of many factors inexhaustible.
Mentioning lack of a standard female football League structure will amount to over flogging the issue without a tangible improvement, the male football League (NPFL) itself isn’t even on.
In 2016 after the Super Falcons won the Africa’s Womens Nations Cup in Cameroon, the players protested for bonuses to be paid, the champions refused to leave their hotel rooms while runners-ups and hosts Cameroon had a royal reception from the President.
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But rather than pay bonuses Coach Florence Omagbemi was sacked as she was said to have mobilized the players against the Nigeria Football Federation.
The move showed the intent of the bigwigs in the NFF, they want no opposition, the AWCON doesn’t impress them, besides its the seventh one and its nothing special.The body claimed it was cash-strapped and was only able to pay after the government released about 1.2m US Dollars
In 2017, the Super Falcons went a whole year without training or playing a match and also without a coach, eventually after Randy Waldrum rejected the offer to be the coach, Thomas Dennerby was appointed with what seemed like a good interest.
Everything went normal although the Swede was unimpressive as the Falcons huffed and puffed to another AWCON title winning the last two games of the competition on penalties.
The FIFA Womens World Cup in France earlier this year brought a little bit of stability as the team made it out of the group stage for the first time in over 15 years.
Unfortunately, the progress was cut short after the ouster of the team from the World Cup, captain of the side to the mundial Desire Oparanozie requested for equal pay between the Super Eagles and Super Falcons but her demands was met with controversies.
It turned out that the NFF owed home based players in the Super Falcons squad, her outburst led to series of events and it was not long that Thomas Dennerby revealed that his job was been interfered with by NFF officials.
Days later Christopher Danjuma was made interim coach of the Super Falcons, Desire Oparanozie was stripped of her captaincy and handed over to Asisat Oshoala and as the team prepared to face Ivory Coast, Desire Oparanozie and Dennerby was missing from the team with no official statement as to the Swede’s position.
It all happened so fast that it looked well pre-meditated, the bigwigs who Dennerby claimed interfered with his job showed their hands but not their faces, to them it’s all about having their way at the team’s expense they needed a puppet to eject Oparanozie and Danjuma was the safest hands to manipulate especially as Dennerby was a disturbance, he had to go with his captain, not even the Minister of Sports could prevent it.
One step forward, ten backwards, from round of 16 appearances at the World Cup to failing to qualify for the Olympics, the NFF seems less bothered, their man is in charge the coast is clear there isn’t any sign of opposition at least from the managers of the team.
The choice of Danjuma was simple and easy to choose, he never had a history of any of the national teams he handled confronting the NFF in the past, if not why hand over the team to a coach whose tactical deficiency is glaring?
He failed to qualify the Super Falcons for Rio 2016 as an interim coach, the less said about his 2018 Super Falconets team to the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup the better, if he is deemed the best choice for the Super Falcons then it underlines the regard that the NFF holds the female National teams.
