Super Falcons’ captain, Asisat Oshoala, has identified inexperience as the reason for Nigeria’s inability to qualify for Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Nigeria’s women national team under Thomas Dennerby’s replacement Christopher Danjuma lost the qualification ticket to Ivory Coast after a 1-1 draw at the Agege Stadium on October 8, 2019. The first leg had ended barren for both sides in Abidjan four days earlier.

Danjuma assembled a team without Desire Oparanozie, Rita Chikwelu, Halimatu Ayinde and Onome Ebi.

“In the Olympic Qualifiers, we did our best to qualify but obviously, we didn’t have our best team,” Oshoala highlighted in an interview with Goal.

“Our best team didn’t play the qualifying games. I was there and we missed a lot of players from the Women’s World Cup who didn’t feature in the Olympic qualifying matches.

“I think that if we are going to be building a team and really wanted to go to the Olympics, the players that we had were not experienced enough.” the 25-year-old explained.

Danjuma invited seven overseas-based and 11 home-based professionals for the clash. Oparanozie was nowhere on the list days after he had chosen the FC Barcelona forward to lead the team ahead of the team’s former captain.

“There were a lot of young players, maybe they were trying to build the team but it thinks experience counts a lot in games that involve two legs and then it’s a knockout.

“A lot of experienced players were not part of the team and it actually added to the reason why we didn’t qualify. “We also had a lot of younger players coming into the team and the coach trying to build around them. We were so unlucky not to qualify,” Oshoala said.