The defeat suffered by the team yesterday (although largely due to goal keeping error from Precious Dede) was long in coming. And much more significantly, represents the first time the team would not play in the final of the tournament since the inception.

Such was the dominance of our female teams all over Africa! We won all the five titles so far. Annihilated all oppositions and played some breathtaking football along the way. I remember the final in South Africa two years ago; the Super Falcons taught the Cameroonians a lesson ‘am sure, they would never forget.

During the period of this domination, we represented Africa in all international competitions be it the Olympics or FIFA Women world cup. While we may not have achieved anything tangible at these tournaments, we had always shown that our team someday will be a force to reckon with in these championships.

It is not a small achievement to consistently be at the top for close to a decade in any competition talk less of the beautiful game-Football. This is what our Super Falcons managed to do and they deserve our kudos for it.

It is very obvious that no team wins forever. The cycle will break one day and it happened to be yesterday!

While some would start throwing blames here and there, I sincerely hope that we will not condemn the team in its entirety. They have done us proud in the past. A true fan knows that you win some and you lose some. This is the way of our game.

What we need to do now is to take a critical look at what happened over there as the team was obviously not in shape and resolve to come back even stronger in the future to reclaim our top position. This is the way of champions and I dare say that the Super Falcons are indeed champions!