Evelyn Nwabouku and Thomas DennerbyNWPL media

Dennerby explains Nwabuoku's defensive role for the Super Falcons

Thomas Dennerby has explained why Evelyn Nwabuoku has made Nigeria's provisional squad for the Women's World Cup.

The Super Falcons' 2015 World Cup captain was left out of the 2018 African Women's Cup of Nations in Ghana, the 2019 Chinese and Cyprus Women's Cup tournaments and the national camp in Spain.

However, the 33-year-old midfielder was recalled to the national team fold in March and later featured as a central defender at the 2019 WAFU Women's Cup in Abidjan.

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Having successfully captained the country to regional success in Cote d'Ivoire, the gaffer gave his assessment of Nwabuoku in her new role.

"Evelyn [Nwabuoku]'s last two games were brilliant. She's getting better and better with every game. I'm happy with that," Dennerby told Goal. 

"Everybody can see that we don't use her as a midfielder but as a defender because there is an option to do that also.

"When we started at the beginning, I said that the type of players we've been searching for in the midfield are young, quick moving and more mobile players. Nothing has changed. 

"Now, we've seen already that we made a very good decision redeploying her to where she can do a lot with her playing vision and reading of the game. She also won a lot of duels. 

"She's doing fantastically well as a central defender. We will see how better she could get when we get to Austria."

Nwabuoku is on the plane to the Austria camp, where she will hope to fight for a place in the final squad to France. 

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