August 22, (THEWILL) – After winning the African Football Player of the Year award for the fifth and historic time on July 21 in Rabat, Morocco, Nigeria’s Asisat Oshoala once again wrote her name in gold when she became the first-ever African woman to be nominated for the Ballon d’Or on Thursday, August 11 at the unveiling of the shortlist of nominees for UEFA’s Best Players in the male and female categories.
It was another pedestal of achievement for Africa’s most prolific female footballer and the pinnacle of a professional career in football, whose promise of glory was evident as far back as in 2014 when she championed Nigeria’s drive to the Under-20 World Cup second-place finish. The squad had lost to Germany by the slightest margin of a lone goal after extra time.
It is instructive that at a moment when Oshoala is bringing all this honour to her name and her country, there is another U-20 World Cup competition underway as if to open the eyes of the country to the very real possibility of grooming another generation of players that will take the torch from Oshoala and continue the drive to put Nigeria in the places of honour in world football in particular and global sports in general.
Even though on Wednesday the news broke that Oshoala missed out in the race for the coveted Ballon d’Or trophy after UEFA named her Barcelona Femeni teammate, Alexia Putellas, Arsenal’s Beth Mead, Wolfsburg’s Lena Oberdorf as the top three finalists for the 2022 UEFA Women’s Player of the Year honour, it does nothing to remove from the fact that the 27-year-old has cut for herself a place in terms of recognition of her qualities, talents, abilities and drive towards excellence.
For a long time, fans of the forward had wondered what it was going to take to give her the honour due to her performances at the level of UEFA in much the same way she had been duly recognised as home, on the continent and by FIFA. Even after she helped Barcelona lift the UEFA Champions League title two seasons ago, to become only the first African woman to do so, she was not deemed worthy of a nomination by France Football for the Ballon d’Or until this year. It is now on record that the Nigerian has been recognised as one of the top 20 best footballers in the highly competitive European football matrix.
That this recognition comes after a season during which Oshoala missed no less than seven weeks on the sidelines while nursing a pair of lengthy injuries and in which she still finished as the Primera Ibedrola joint top-scorer makes it all the more significant.
She churned out 20 goals (the same number of goals as Real Madrid’s Geyse Ferreira) and three assists, in 27 games of the 30-game season, on the way to helping Barca’s run to the the Spanish Primera División de la Liga de Futbol Femenino title. Their near-perfect dominance of female football last season saw them score an eye-watering 158 goals while conceding just 11. They lifted all three domestic trophies, the Copa de la Reina, La Liga, and the Spanish Super Cup, without losing or drawing a single match, to cap off a fantastic season. Oshoala’s feat was recognised by FIFA in a tweet that congratulated her for the Pichichi Award.
These accolades, preceding the TotalEnergies 2022 African Women’s Cup of Nations, raised expectations for another sterling showing by Oshoala for the Super Falcons, but unfortunately, the reality panned out differently. She was restricted to only playing a small part for the Super Falcons at the tournament in Morocco because of her perennial nemesis: injury.
In the very first tie of the competition, a 2-1 loss to eventual winners Banyana Banyana of South Africa, she received a knock in the seventh minute but was left to play it out until late in the second half resulting in what is became a Grade 2 Medial Collateral Ligament Strain. It meant she was forced to leave the competition and could play no more roles in Nigeria’s faltering attempts at a 10th African title. Despite placing fourth, the Super Falcons were granted entry into the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which will take place in Australia and New Zealand. There is every likelihood that, just as Mead is in the three-woman contest for the Ballon d’Or based on her contribution to England’s triumph at Work
Euro 2022, Oshoala’s name could have made the list as well had she been able to play the WAFCON at the level she is known to perform.
However, in the chase for a Ballon d’Or, it is on record, as visible on the information page of Oshoala on the Barca website, that she already has her name on one of the awards handed out in recognition of a footballer’s overall play and total contribution to a team’s success. She got the junior Ballon d’Or (the Golden Ball) at the 2014 U-20 World Cup, together with the Golden Shoe before she went on to top striking tables across Europe, Asia and at home in Africa. It all began on a large scale after her dominating run at the seventh edition of the U-20 World Cup, which took place from August 5–24, 2014 in Canada. From that highpoint, Oshoala has not looked back. She saw the reward of her hard work and the recognition that followed in front of the whole world and her dedication, discipline and determination has continued to lift her to every greater heights to the point of becoming a reference point to girls wishing to be just like her, or even more.
That is why it is instructive to note that her latest accomplishment of being one of the nominees for the Ballon d’Or comes at a time when a fresh set of Super Falconets are currently representing Nigeria at the U-20 World Cup in Costa Rica and have put up an impressively sensational display throughout the group stage of the competition with a perfect record against some tough opponents.
The Super Falconets started their quest for lifting the Cup by defeating defending champions France 1-0 in the Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica, San José, in the early hours of Friday, August 12. In a player, who has the giftedness of Oshoala, the star of Christopher Danjuma’s girls was striker Flourish Sabastine. It was her 85th minute goal that gave Nigeria the victory. France had scored earlier but a VAR review determined that the Super Falconets’ goalkeeper Monle Oyono had been fouled before the goal and it was correctly overruled. Five minutes before time, Idoko took the opportunity of Oyono’s long ball and a through pass to score the winner.
That gave them all the buoyancy they needed to top their group, having beaten the reigning champions to start off their Group C challenge. In the second game, the Super Falconets defeated South Korea’s Taegeuk Ladies 1-0 at the Estadio Alajuela Morera Soro with an outstanding goal from Esther Onyenezide, who was the hero of matchday two as Sabastine had been in the first tie.
While goalkeeper Oyono’s reflexes continued to keep Nigeria in the game, Onyenezide, who had been dominant in midfield and had drawn a few fouls as a result, gave Nigeria the victory in the 83rd minute with a thundering long-range strike that South Korea goalkeeper Kim Kyeonghee was helpless to stop. The young ladies wrapped up the group stage with a more thorough win when Onyenezide added to her tally with a brace and Chioma Olise scored to see the Super Falconets overcome an early goal deficit and defeat the young ladies from Canada.
As the Nigerian squad prepare for their quarter-final matchup against the Netherlands, which is billed for Sunday, August 21, there are already impressive names in the lineup, whose performances have been remarkable enough to keep Nigeria winning. Sabastine’s goal-scoring has never been in doubt and she is resilient against any defense she faces, always troubling, always probing and being more than a handful to keep in check.
Onyenezide is another hot member to the U-20 squad and the three goals she has to her name in the first three games exactly amplifies her quality and reputation. The sharpness of the keeper, who so far has only let in a single goal throughout the group stage is another positive for the future of the women’s game in the country. These players must have seen the nomination of Oshoala got the Ballon d’Or in the news and realised that she began in the very same competition that they are now in. That is a very strong motivating factor for them to give everything they have to have the kind of record-setting recognition that Oshoala has made of her career.
It is also important that the government recognises the importance of these age-range competitions especially the very clear case that Oshoala’s successes have made to continue to lead the way in supporting the grooming of young talents, many of whom are willing to dedicate themselves to a professional career in sports.
Right from primary schools, the culture of Inter-House sports ought to be revived conjoined with a clear programme of nurturing blooming talents with government-backed, private sector participating events, which will all culminate in developing a pool of gifted Nigerians to represent the country, as many of our sports women have done recently (and the men as well), in bringing glory to the name of the country and theirs as well.
About the Author
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
