Women's football: Equatorial Guinea is back in favor?
Women's Nzalang training session at Rebola Stadium in the suburbs of Malabo.
© RFI / Fabien Essiane
Text by: Fabien Essiane
4 min
The 2022 Women's Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers are on the horizon.
Equatorial Guinea will face DR Congo on October 20.
The opportunity for RFI to come back to the Equatorial Guinean selection, winner of the 2008 and 2012 CAN, which is back in the stadiums after a long crossing of the desert.
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From our correspondent in Equatorial Guinea,
Rebola Stadium, in the northern suburbs of Malabo.
An afternoon.
The Equatorial Guinea women's football team (Women's Nzalang) is in the middle of a training session.
The girls are preparing for the knockout meeting of the next Women's Africa Cup of Nations, scheduled for July 2022 in Morocco.
This CAN will be qualifying for the 2023 World Cup. This is why we notice an intense preparation.
The first leg will pit them against the DRC on October 20.
For the Congolese Jean Paul Pila, coach of Equatorial Guinea for almost two years, “
we have set up a long-term project. We have made the team 85% younger. We are in the process of setting up a young team with the aim of regaining our intrinsic value. One of the few that we have kept and who is part of the wave of 2012 is Captain Salomé Nké. And we are climbing a crescendo. We work without pressure. Moreover, the first fruits began to fall in 2020, when we won the Uniffac Cup
[a regional competition, Editor's note], ”he explained to RFI.
The women's Nzalang is therefore trying to regain the front of the continental football scene after several years of suspension by the International Football Federation (FIFA).
After having made the heyday of African women's football by winning two CAN in 2008 and 2012, the Equatorial Guineans had disappeared from the radar.
The country played in the 2011 World Cup, a first participation without a future.
Since then, their wisp Anonma Genoveva has hung up his boots and retired.
And the selection is under reconstruction.
"
We are working to train more powerful players as we had known in the past with players like Genoveva, Nke, Diana and many others
" indicates the President of the Equatorial Guinean Federation (Feguifut), Venancio Tomas Ndong Micha.
Teodoro Obiang Nguema: "Train a new generation of footballers"
In February 2020, Equatorial Guinea was therefore talked about again by winning a Uniffac tournament without great stakes.
A victory that has plunged the Equatorial Guinean supporters back into the memory of a glorious past.
In an interview with RFI a few weeks ago, the Head of State of Equatorial Guinea gave his point of view on this women's football. “
The Nzalang today is the reflection of Equatorial Guinean football which alternates between the best and the worst. When we invested in football, we did it because we really liked it. And we wanted to highlight the women of our country who play football. I don't see these poor results as a disappointment, but a way to boost their morale. I know it is time to train a new generation of Equatorial Guinean footballers who will allow the country to regain the place it occupied in the past,
”explained Teodoro Obiang Nguema
.
In July 2016, the country's first lady, Constancia Mangue de Obiang, provided support of FCFA 99 million to women's football to boost this discipline. But his setbacks had already started well in 2012 with a case of Brazilian players who had been hastily naturalized. Then, the denunciations were linked in cascade. The Nzalang had become the laughing stock of women's football circles, following these multiple scandals.
Then, while we believed the country was ready to approach the summits, it was rather a period of decline that we experienced.
But, today, it is the renaissance operation.
First obstacle, the DRC before hoping to meet the winner of Egypt - Tunisia, and to think of a possible third coronation, during the CAN 2022. “
The mission is not impossible.
This DRC, we had beaten it in the final of the Uniffac Tournament.
So we will go with a strong morale.
We just need to work a lot as we have been doing for several months,
”assures coach Jean-Paul Pila.
All hope is therefore permitted.
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