U20 team needs support, not criticism

LAST Sunday we saw how the PNG girls played against Brazil in the first day of the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup tournament.
It was not good that PNG lost to Brazil 9-0.
A lot of criticism was hurled at the PNG girls’ poor performance against the South American team.
Yes, I also was not happy with simple mistakes made by the PNG players – kicking the ball around without any sense of where the ball was going too. It was unbelievable and disheartening.
However, we must remind ourselves that most of the teams coming to play here are professionals – they are a class above our national team.
So, we must stop criticizing negatively and face the facts. For instance, our girls have been beaten recently by other international representative teams like Japan and New Zealand with the same score line.
And then notice too that the scores for the other games on Sunday were: Sweden 0 – Korea DPR 2, Spain 5 – Canada 0 and Japan 6 – Nigeria 0.
So, when you look at it, the PNG girls did not do too badly.
I noticed too in the second half of their game that the Brazilians were getting exhausted and if the PNG girls had added a bit more pressure, they could have surprised all of us in scoring a goal or two.
Hopefully, they can make that happen in their other matches.
For now, it is our hope that the PNG girls should learn from their mistakes on Sunday and play a much better game in their remaining matches.
We trust that Coach Lisa Cole and her management team should by now get through to the PNG girls to stop making basic mistakes and play proper football in the other remaining matches.
We will stand with the PNG team and give our best support and may they surprise us and the world in the remaining matches.
Go PNG!
 
Pro PNG Soccer
Port Moresby