Super Falcons of Nigeria Captain Asisat Oshoala says women’s football in Africa needs a lot of investment from cooperating bodies and serious attention from football governing bodies if they are to compete with the rest of the world.
The reigning Africa Women’s Player of the Year Asisat Oshoala also stated that lack of structures and passion from CAF and the national associations have made it difficult for investors to look toward the direction of the women’s football.
Oshoala who criticized the Confederation of Africa Football (Caf) for canceling the 2020 African women’s championship told brila.net that women’s football in Africa needs total rebranding to make it attractive to investors and needed publicities from the media.
“The players are speaking up, but at the end of the day, others are silent about it, it should not be a fight for the players alone, we need the Federations and the media as well.”
“As I said, it’s the investments from the big guys that we need to start from, We also need the media, like you can see the women’s world cup with a lot of investment and publicity. The 2011 world cup was different from 2015 and 2019 was great as well. It keeps getting better because of the investment.” she told www.brila.net.
Before the cancelation of the tournament, CAF was unable to get a country to host the tournament, and Oshoala said it is disheartening that Africa remains stagnant while other continents are moving forward strongly.
” In the last ten years, maybe only four or five countries have actually hosted this tournament, At some point, I heard Nigeria was trying to host but we should not be here struggling to get a host in 2020 when other continents are planning for the next ten tournaments already. It’s not possible,” she said.