Super Falcons hat-trick heroine Asisat Oshoala says she is now more of a team player after teammates prevailed on her to eschew the pursuit of individual accolades for collective glory.

The three-time African Footballer of the year was named Woman of The Match after scoring three times to help Nigeria see off Equatorial Guinea in the last round of Group B fixtures in the ongoing 2018 Women Africa Cup of Nations in Ghana. Francisca Ordega, Desire Oparanozie, and Rita Chikwelu got the other goals to complete the mauling of Nzalang Nacional at the Cape Coast Stadium and Oshoala responding to questions about why she hasn’t been at her best until now said that her goals were secondary to the team’s objectives.

“This tournament is not about individual performance for me,” the reigning African Footballer of the year said.

“For me, the most important thing is to get the World Cup ticket and I think I decided to be more of a team player. I care more about my team [and] my nation rather than personal glory and individual accolades for myself in this tournament,

“For me, I think with my experience and with what we’ve discussed as a team, the team victory [and] success is more important than my own. I’m happy with myself, I’m happy with my teammates and I think Nigerians are happy which is the most important thing here.”

The Dalian Quanjian forward who had a difficult outing in the previous game against Zambia where she squandered seven goalscoring opportunities said her hat trick against Equatorial Guinea was just a reward for the hard work she’s put in at the tournament and also a testament to the quality of her teammates.

The Falcons have now had seven different scorers in the three games they’ve played so far and the 24-year old former Arsenal Ladies of England striker believes the onus of scoring goals doesn’t lie with her alone as so many players in the team are capable of scoring.

“I think everyone now has confidence in every striker in the team because each game we have different strikers scoring goals,” she said.

“I mean we don’t have to depend on just Asisat in the team, you have [Francisca] Ordega, Desire [Oparanozie], Anam [Imo], [Rasheedat] Ajibade, so a lot of players like this we have goal scoring attackers in the team I think this is very good for the team as a whole. We have confidence in ourselves I might be like a plus for the players but all the strikers in the team are goal scoring strikers so we have confidence in each other.”