Nigeria’s under-17 women’s national team, Flamingos’ coach Bankole Olowookere is already plotting the strategy that will help his side defeat Delta State in the female football final at this year’s National Sports Festival in Ogun State.
Sports247 gathered that the Flamingos, who are playing at Gateway Games 2025 under the banner of Invited Junior Athletes (IJA), will lock horns with Delta State on Tuesday in the mainbowl of MKO Abiola Sports Complex,
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Abeokuta to determine which contingent goes home with the festival’s female football gold medals.
Casting his mind agead of Tuesday’s game, Olowookere conceded that it could end in another single goal victory for his side, just as it was in their semi-final win over hosts Ogun State, for which he gave profound thanks to God for making the slim victory possible.
Olowookere declared: “I give all glory to God. No man can achieve anything without God.
So, I give glory to God Almighty, and then I also praise my young girls. They fought hard, stood their ground and defended the flag of the federation very well.
“It’s a face-saving result because it won’t be good that a team of this nature couldn’t get to the final. So, I’m happy that they played well, they defended well and they got the victory.
So, after God, it’s those girls, and I give them the kudos.”
The bronze winning coach at the 2022 FIFA U17 Women’s World in India then reflected on the run of play that saw his side rely on a very late penalty to edge Ogun State aside in the semi-final, during which he recalled how he had to rejig his squad after the first half in order to turn the game around in their favour.
Olowookere analysed further: “This is my job as a coach. So, we played the first half and we studied how it was. We’ve never played them before but we watched them well.
“So, based on what we saw in the first half, I had to plug loopholes in my team and see where we could strengthen ourselves.
We then tried to pile pressure in order to see how we could contain them, especially because they have a good striker.
“Once we contained them, we were able to reduce their pressure on us and then express ourselves. Having done that, we were able to flow the ball to our attackers.
For them to score goals, they needed to get good balls and then take our chances.”
He also spoke about insinuations in some quarters that his team played as if they were relying on a penalty kick to get the winning goal, which he denied, but confessed that they actually aimed to get set pieces in the opponents’ dangerous zones.
Olowookere explained his method of approach and disclosed, “We just had to push the ball forward to see if we could score a goal in the run of play or get a free kick.
All the same, we practised for penalties in our last training, in case it should end in a draw and go into penalty shootout.
“But, thank God that we got our goal at a very crucial time in the dying minutes. We got a penalty, which we were able to convert. So, kudos to the girls for that.”
He concluded with his down-to-earth analysis of Tuesday’s final, ahead of which he acknowledged that Delta State have a good attack, but equally pointed out that the Flamingos defeated them earlier in the group stage and they are yet to concede a single goal so far in this unfolding competition that will hit a climax on Tuesday afternoon in The Rock City.
“We have not conceded any goal so far, and we beat them 1-0 earlier … but that was in the group stage. This is now the final, and it’s the game that matters most. Now we are looking at the big price, which is the prestigious gold medal.
“The ultimate is the gold medal. We know we deserve it, but we are not going there on any pride. We give them their own respect, and we’ll look at them to see what they can do.
We’ll also check ourselves and see where we can improve. Just one goal can make the difference again, as it did in the semi-final,” Olowookere posited.
