Black Princesses Technical Advisor Nora Hauptle speaks about role, expectations, FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup and more: Transcript

The newly appointed Technical Advisor of the Black Princesses Nora Hauptle has resumed her role and is at the camping base of the team at the Ghanaman soccer Centre of Excellence, Prampram. The former Switzerland International has been speaking about expectations, her role and preparations for FIFA Women’s U-20 World Cup Costa Rica 2022. Read on for the full transcript:

On her first impressions about Ghana

It is my first time in Ghana and I am very excited and curious to be here. I want to thank the Football Association for the opportunity to work in this lovely atmosphere. I am hoping to learn new culture and so I am excited to be working with the U-20 ahead of the World Cup, let’s start the journey.

On role as Technical Advisor

My role as a Technical advisor is to support Head Coach Ben (Fokuo) and the whole staff. It is about framing the tactic because we will be playing the best opponents like USA. We need to know what the demands of the game are and so I will try to shape the defense towards it and support the staff. I will also build relationship with the players. They are very talented players in the squad and I think it is very important to work with them to get the best.

On expectations for the team

The expectations are always high in soccer and I think I have the experience from Switzerland where I coached the U-19’s for five years, played two European Championships and so I know how tournaments work. It is the big goal with Ghana to survive the group stage, a tough group where we are paired with USA, Japan and the Netherlands, three of the best countries in Women’s football. It is a very difficult task we need to fulfill but we are full of passion to face them and hopefully work hard to pass the group stage.

On plan to survive the group stage

We will bring in the foreign players who have the talent and are playing in Europe. We need such players because they come out of Leagues with good playing rhythm and so we need to implement all those players and level them up to the best we can. We will need to shape the defense because we will spend a lot of time in these matches in the defense face. We need to structure it and be discipline in the defense work. We need to most importantly create the spirit of the team because when you want to succeed in such tournaments, you need the mindset and a team spirit which is overwhelming otherwise, it is very difficult to perform at such level.

On talent in Ghana team

There are a lot of talents in this team with different strengths and we need to focus on the strengths. There are some players who are skillful, others are speedy and also personalities in the team. We need to build on our strength. Some of the players play together in the country and so they have good playing rhythm. We need to level up all those players and bring together the right players for the right match setting. USA demands a lot of defense and so we need to put together players who can fulfill the task depending on the opponent.

The Black Princess will pitch camp in Europe from July 15-30 where they will play the France National team as part of preparations for the tournament.

Ghana are in Group D alongside U.S.A., Japan and the Netherlands.

The FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup will kick off on August 10th 2022 in Costa Rica.

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