Super Falcons head coach Randy Waldrum has expressed his disappointment over the absence of key players Ashleigh Plumptre and Halimat Ayinde from his squad for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.<\/p>\n
Plumptre is currently recovering from an injury sustained while playing for her Saudi club, Al Ittihad, and Ayinde was forced to withdraw from the team after suffering an injury during training.<\/p>\n
Despite the setback, Waldrum remains optimistic about the team’s prospects, citing the depth and talent within the squad. “The good thing about having a national team is having experienced players and the young ones coming up to replace them when ready. Right now, we have a good blend of experienced players and young ones, and I think they are going to have a great future with the team,” Waldrum told NFF TV.<\/p>\n
Waldrum acknowledged the significant impact of losing players of Plumptre and Ayinde’s caliber, describing them as “world-class players tough for any team to lose.” However, he emphasized the importance of resilience and adaptability within the squad. “The thing we preach to our players all along is that somebody else has to step up and replace them, and I think we saw that with Chidinma Okeke coming in at left-back for Plumptre when she was out against Cameroon and South Africa.”<\/p>\n
The coach highlighted the squad’s midfield depth, mentioning players like Deborah Abiodun and Toni Payne as capable replacements. “It’s still a solid midfield. We have other players; Echegini can play in there, and Ajibade can play in there. So, even though we lose some players, we have some depth in there. It certainly has to happen; I feel bad for them for not going to the Olympics.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Super Falcons head coach Randy Waldrum has expressed his disappointment over the absence of key players Ashleigh Plumptre and Halimat Ayinde from his squad for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Plumptre is currently recovering from an injury sustained while playing for her Saudi club, Al Ittihad, and Ayinde was forced to withdraw from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":39021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[799,1204],"class_list":["post-39150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-super-falcons","tag-waldrum"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39155,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39150\/revisions\/39155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}