The Ford Football Ferns kick off their campaign to qualify for their fifth Summer Olympic Games today in Samoa at the OFC Women's Olympic Qualifier 2024. 

Ahead of the tournament, we caught up with head coach Jitka Klimková about how the team were feeling before the first game against Tonga. 

The first training session is complete here in Samoa ahead of the OFC Women's Olympic Qualifier 2024. How's the team feeling and how was the session? 

First of all, during this 45 minute short and sharp session, we experienced everything. We experienced the hot weather, humidity, rain and all the conditions that we were actually expecting.

So I'm glad that we could start actually training with the players. We were able to arrive a little bit earlier so the first session is behind us and we are moving on to the next one to get ready for our first game.

It is summer time here in Samoa and the conditions are pretty extreme. How are the team adjusting to playing knowing that we've got three plus games in these sorts of conditions?

The good thing is a lot of our experienced players have already been through those conditions, they understand what is in front of us. Even the ones who are here for the first time with the senior team, they've experienced this type of tournament with the youth team, so it's not surprising.

 

Of course it will take a time to adjust but we are very careful with how we prepare the sessions, how we are going to really split the minutes during the games with our players so really be careful about the loading.

The players are focusing a lot on their recovery. When you have only two days between the games, and our aim is to play definitely five games, we need to be mindful about that.

What are the goals of the team for this tournament? 

Obviously, step by step, we are focusing here to qualify for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics in France in July, so that's our main focus. 

We are aware that we are here for a little bit longer period of time [than a normal international window], so our main focus is to qualify, but we want to keep evolving our football, so we will spend a lot of time on how we progress our attacking football. 

Article added: Wednesday 07 February 2024