Fiji’s U-20 Women’s side are already history makers and at Colombia 2024 they’re aiming for small steps on the global stage. Photo: FIFA.com
Former top Fijian soccer coach Gurjit Singh believes the Fiji Under-20 women's team can match the top teams at the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup.
But he said a lot will depend on the mental preparation and discipline of the players.
Singh coached several teams in Fiji to win local titles and was national men's coach in 2011.
He was also coach of the year three times in a country where soccer is only second to rugby union.
He is now based in the United States, where he continues to coach the sport.
In the last few weeks, he had the opportunity to watch the Fiji U-20 side on their three match tour, where the team won two and lost one game.
He said discipline and the spirit to keep fighting against top teams like Brazil, France and Canada, who the team will face in pool play, is a must.
"Discipline will be key during these games and I can see so far they are okay with discipline," Singh said.
"But players have to be careful as Brazil, France, Canada will be playing fast pace soccer and the players have to avoid late tackles."
He said the strength of the team is they have natural athletic built and they are physically fit.
"They just need to focus till last whistle and not to fear any team. Negative approach should be out of their mind. Need to keep pushing with positive suggestions and ideas n thoughts."
He said everyone who knows soccer will understand that the Young Kulas will not have an easy time in their pool.
But he urge the players to go out and give their best.
"We all soccer fans know that these three games for our Young Kulas will be very tough . It's reality," he said.
"The head coach and the coaching staff have been working on the formation of the team and concentrating on keeping tight defending through-out 90 minutes.
"Well, this is our first fiji womens team to world cup and we all wish the team best wishes. Just give your best and I usually say anything can happen in a game of soccer. So keep giving your best."
Former Fiji coach Gurjit Singh Photo: Supplied
Singh said the team showed a lot of promise during the five games they played, including the two against Costa Rico and Morocco, which Fiji lost by 2-0 score-lines both times.
"They played three games and started with winning both games to give some confidence to the players.
"The third game was against Lincoln University team, which was a tough game where the team lost 4-0. Coach and the coaching staff worked more on defense," Singh said.
"After looking at all three games I did give my suggestions regarding defending, especially their body positioning without ball possession. Team had been doing hard work on defence."
"They played two world cup teams in Costa Rica and Morocco, losing 2-0 . To me these two losses wasn't bad, they did great job."
Realistic targets - Chua
With less than a week to kick-off, Fiji's head coach, Angeline Chua, said they are thrilled at the opportunity.
She said they are realistic enough to know that Colombia 2024 is going to be a particularly tough assignment.
In an interview with FIFA.com, Chu said they are the first Fijian women's side, at any level, to reach a global finals.
"We are realistic and we know how difficult it will be," Chua said. "I think we're in the toughest group for sure where all the teams we're playing are ranked [at senior level] inside the top ten.
"This is all about opportunities, it's better to be Fiji coming out of Oceania rather than other nations, such as New Caledonia or others, who we beat to qualify for this World Cup.
"Our players now get this opportunity even though we know we are going to face very tough opponents."
Having finished as runners-up to New Zealand at the 2023 OFC U-19's Women's Championship, it was initial heartbreak for the Young Kulas with Oceania having just a single place at Colombia 2024.
With the decision to expand the tournament though, an extra berth opened up and that saw Fiji cleared for a mission to Medellin.
With 18 of the 21-strong squad based domestically in Fiji, Chua will be looking to the team's three overseas members to add some extra quality to the group and in Talei Moodie, currently impressing at the top level of the college game in the United States with Fullerton, the team could have a real x-factor.
A narrow defeat in a warm-up match against Costa Rica this week has raised expectations that the team could be competitive in Colombia, but Chua is making sure they have measured expectations heading into their first tournament at this level.
"We've been training since April to find a way to meet our dreams and expectations but we have to be realistic as to where we are at," Chua continued. "We've set two small targets; one of those is to try and score our very first goal in the tournament, that's what we're going with as that would be a dream outcome for us.
"The second one is to hold an opponent without conceding a goal for as long as possible. We know we will be defending a lot of the time, maybe 80 per cent of the time, so we are working a lot in that area."
For both Chua and Fiji the challenge now is to give as strong an account of themselves in Colombia as possible.
"We know it's going to be tough, of course it's going to be tough," Chua admitted. "From our region, even New Zealand just won their first ever match at the senior World Cup last year. They have been participating for several years and only just won so we know where we stand and how tough it is.
"To go in and say that we want to win a match is maybe an unrealistic goal, or say that we want to qualify for the knockout stage because that takes a long time. Even for a country like Brazil it's taken a long time to finish third again at the U-20s as they did at the previous World Cup.
"So we are very realistic, with the main aim being to keep the scoreline as low as we can for as long as possible and then to be as resilient, with as much teamwork as possible, and to stick together on the pitch."
The team departs for Colombia today (Wednesday) for the World Cup.
They play Brazil in their first World Cup match on Sunday at 11am (Fiji and NZ time) before meeting Canada at 1pm next Wednesday.
Their last match will be against France at 10am next Saturday.