Reigning Africa women’s Player of the Year Asisat Oshoala has charged cooperate bodies and football governing bodies in Africa to invest towards the growth of women’s football if they are to compete favourably with their well-funded counterparts across the world.
Super Falcons of Nigeria Captain, Oshoala said that the attitude and structure of the Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) and football associations in the continent have been a stumbling block towards attracting investors to sponsor women’s football in Africa.
In a chat with the media, Oshoala expressed her displeasure at the cancellation of the 2020 African Women’s championship by CAF and advocated proper rebranding of women’s football in Africa to make it appealing to potential investors and required publicity from the media.
Oshoala said, “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 said.
She decried the inability of CAF to get to get a host nation for the women’s showpiece before its cancellation, saying it is sad that women’s football is not developing at the same pace with the rest of the world.
” 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.
Source: Brilla