Black Maidens Coach Baba Nuhu says his team will soon shift focus from low profile friendly matches to high profile games and tactical work ahead of next month’s FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup qualifiers against Senegal.
Ghana will next month, take on the Young Teranga Lioness in the first round of qualifiers for the India 2022 tournament and Coach Baba Nuhu expects his players to tune their mind towards that mission.
He has been training different sets of players and engaging in friendly matches at the Ghanaman Centre of Excellence at Prampram in his quest to build a winsome squad worthy of making it to the World Cup.
‘’I think the Morocco friendly was a very good excise because some of the girls that was their first time of even seeing the Accra Sports stadium and so it’s always good that when you are preparing a team you give them that opportunity to see how they can stand the test of time’’ Baba Nuhu told ghanafa.org.
‘’Beyond that, we were supposed to travel to Egypt for another friendly but that didn’t happen so we had to play a U-13 team to see how prepared we are moving from the Morocco match since that game didn’t happen we needed to get a game in place to see how we are progressing.
‘’Even though we lost 3-2 I can say that playing against boys and taking a two goal lead before going down 3-2 is not a bad exercise at all and so going forward.
‘’I have noticed one or two mistakes especially at the back. I gave an opportunity to those who didn’t get to play against Morocco that is how come you saw different faces today. But getting to the latter part of the game, I brought in those who started the Morocco game just to see how players would fare in the absence of others.
‘’So we are on course, it was a useful exercise, like I said I gave an opportunity to those who didn’t play more minutes against Morocco to bring all of them to be at the same level so from here, we have to get another high profile game before we travel to Senegal for the World Cup qualifier.
‘’From here we will have at least two to three days’ rest before we play another high profile match to test all of them. From next week we will have everybody on board, and then we will start to look at the tactical play of the team.
‘’Now we are okay, we are 30 and now looking for the actual team for the World Cup qualifier. There is no injury worry at all, as for football the normal knocks are there but the medical team are on their feet, working to make sure that everybody is okay for the task ahead.
The Black Maidens have been to six World Cup competitions since its inception in 2008 having finished third in Azerbaijan in 2012.
The FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup will be hosted by India from 11-30 October, 2022. Spain are the defending champions, having won their first title in 2018.
