Cyprus Women’s Cup: Dennerby Unfazed With Belgium Clash (AUDIO)

Super Falcons manager Thomas Dennerby says his team must avoid “any individual mistakes” if they are to come away with a victory against Group C leaders Belgium in their “extremely important” final group fixture at the ongoing Cyrus Women’s Cup.

Second-placed Super Falcons tackle the Belgians at the GSZ Stadium in Larnaca today knowing that victory guarantees them progress to the next round and it is a feat the Swede believes is achievable but only if his wards maintain absolute concentration for the duration of the match.

“[The game against Belgium is] extremely important of course and we definitely hope that we can manage that game and win that game,” he said. “I think it is a really open game, it’s two good teams coming to the field and the one that has the best time will probably win.

“But if we want to win a team like Belgium we can’t do any individual mistakes at all. We have to stay focused for ninety or ninety-five minutes or whatever the referee decides. But we have a really good chance of course and if we can beat Belgium we will be at least number two in the table and we will have a really good game in the fourth game, we will see what happens,” he added.

The Falcons have exhibited a worrying tendency to ship goals having conceded a total of seven in their first two games but Dennerby dismissed any possible worries around his team defensive frailties because according to him, the goals weren’t conceded as a result of “bad organisation or the players not knowing what to do”.

The former manager of Sweden’s women national team rather blamed the early sending off of goalkeeper Tochukwu Oluehi in the 4-1 defeat to Austria in the first game and dodgy refereeing decisions that saw the Falcons concede two penalties in the 4-3 victory over Slovakia as contributory factors to the number of goals conceded by his team.

The Falcons are participating in the Cyprus Women’s Cup as part of their preparations for the FIFA Women’s World Cup which comes up in June. They have been paired with hosts France as well as the Korea Republic and Norway at the Mundial.