Discipline and mental toughness key to Fiji’s FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup: Former national team coach

Fiji’s former top football coach Gurjit Singh believes the Fijian Under-20 women’s football team can compete against the top teams at the FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup.

But he said a lot depends on the mental preparation and discipline of the players.

Singh has coached several Fijian teams, winning local championships, and served as coach of the national men’s basketball team in 2011.

He also won coach of the year three times in a country where football is second only to rugby union.

He now lives in the United States and continues to coach the sport.

In the past few weeks, he had the opportunity to watch and assist the Fiji U-20 team in three matches, with the team winning two and losing one.

He said the team must have the discipline and spirit to play against top teams such as Brazil, France and Canada in the group stage.

“Discipline is crucial in these matches and so far I have seen that their discipline is good,” Singh said.

“But players have to be careful because the football in Brazil, France and Canada is played at a high tempo and players have to avoid late tackles.”

He said the team’s strengths are that they have naturally athletic physiques and are in good health.

“They just need to stay focused until the very end and not be afraid of any team. Negativity should not enter their minds. They need to continue to push the game with positive suggestions, ideas and thoughts.”

He said everyone who knew football knew that the young Kula team would not have an easy time in the group.

But he urged the players to give it their all.

“All of us fans know that these three games are going to be very difficult for our young Kulas team. That’s the reality,” he said.

“The head coach and the coaching staff have been working on the team build-up and focusing on defending well for 90 minutes.

“Well, this is our first time representing Fiji Women’s football team at a World Cup and we all wish the team all the best. Just do your best and I always say anything can happen in football. So just keep doing your best.”

Singh said the team showed a lot of potential in the five matches, including two against Costa Rica and Morocco, where Fiji lost 0-2 in both matches.

“They’ve played three games and won two, which gives the players some confidence.

“The third game was against Lincoln University, which was a tough match and the team lost 4-0. The coach and the coaching staff put more effort into defense,” Singh said.

“After watching the three games, I did have suggestions on the defense, especially their physical positioning without the ball. The team has been working hard on defense.”

“They played two World Cup teams, Costa Rica and Morocco, and lost both times 2-0. For me, those two losses were not bad, they played really well.”

Realistic goals – Chua

With less than a week to go until kick-off, Fiji head coach Angeline Chua said they were very excited about the opportunity.

She said they were realistic enough to know that the 2024 World Cup in Colombia would be a particularly difficult undertaking.

In accepting FIFA official websiteMs Zhu said they were the first Fijian women’s team to reach a global final at any level of competition.

“We are realistic and we know how difficult the competition is,” Cai said. “I think we are definitely in the toughest group and all the teams we play against (in the high division) are ranked in the top 10.

“It’s all about opportunity and if Fiji can come out of Oceania it will be better than other countries like New Caledonia who we beat to qualify for this World Cup.

“Even though we know we’re going to face a very strong opponent, our players are getting that opportunity now.”

The Oceania team finished runners-up to New Zealand at the 2023 Oceania Football Association U-19 Women’s Championship. It was initially heartbreaking for the young Kulas as the Oceania team only secured a single berth at the 2024 tournament in Colombia.

With the decision to expand the tournament, an extra spot became available, allowing Fiji to travel to Medellin.

With 18 of the 21 players in the squad playing in Fiji, Chua is hoping the three overseas players will add some extra quality to the team, while Talei Moodie, who currently plays for the University of Fullerton and has performed well in the top US college competition, could be a real wild card for the team.

A narrow defeat in a warm-up match against Costa Rica this week has raised hopes for the team’s competitiveness in Colombia, but Chua will make sure the team lives up to expectations in its first appearance at a tournament of this magnitude.

“We have been training since April, hoping to find a way to achieve our dreams and expectations, but we have to recognize the current situation,” Cai continued. “We have set two small goals, one of which is to try to score the first goal of this tournament, which is our goal because it is a desirable result for us.”

“The second point is to prevent the opponent from losing the ball for as long as possible. We knew we would be defending a lot of the time, maybe 80 percent of the time, so we put a lot of effort into that.”

The challenge now for Chua and Fiji is to show as much strength as possible in Colombia.

“We knew it was going to be tough, of course it was going to be tough,” Cai admitted. “In our region, New Zealand only won their first tournament in the senior World Cup last year. They’ve been competing for a few years and just won it, so we knew where we were and how tough the competition was.

“If we say we want to win a tournament, that’s probably an unrealistic target, or we want to qualify for the knockout rounds because it takes a long time. Even a country like Brazil took a long time to finish third again at the U-20 Championship, as they did at the last World Cup.

“So we’re very realistic and the main goal is to keep the scoreline as low as possible for as long as possible and then be as tough as possible, work as a team as possible and stick together on the pitch.”

The team departs for Colombia today (Wednesday) for the World Cup.

They will play their first World Cup match against Brazil on Sunday at 11am (Fiji and New Zealand time) before taking on Canada next Wednesday at 1pm.

Their final match will be against France next Saturday at 10am.