Samoa goes up against neighbours

By Sapeer Mayron 21 August 2018, 12:00AM

Samoa women’s football draft team continued their preparation for the qualifying games last night with a friendly match against American Samoa.

The neighbouring team has been in Apia this week before heading to Fiji tomorrow to play for their chance to reach New Caledonia in November.

Samoa women’s development squad has been training together for three weeks with their new head coach, and Football Club Technical Director, Valerio Raccuglia from Italy.

As a new team of 16, these friendly matches are about getting to know each other, especially against a team which has been training intensively ahead of their own qualifier next week. 

American Samoa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji will compete over six days in this qualifying stage of the Oceania Football Confederation (O.F.C.) Women’s Nation Cup 2018.

The winner of the weeks matches will join Samoa, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Tahiti, Cook Islands, Tonga and New Zealand in November.

Coach Valerio Raccuglia said he is always looking for more opportunities to play matches so welcomed the opportunity to play American Samoa.

“Tonight we are trying something new, we’ll see if it works,” he said.

Raccuglia says physical fitness is his focus for the next few weeks of training.

“We use the ball, we run with the ball,” he said.

“We are football players, it’s no fun to run without the ball.”

By Sapeer Mayron 21 August 2018, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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