Fiji Football embracing daunting Olympic draw

FIJI – Fiji admit they face an “almighty challenge” after being drawn against football giants Mexico, Germany and South Korea for their Olympic debut in Rio later this year.

The team completed a six-game tour of Spain in January and head to Brazil later this month for four more matches.

Fiji Football national teams director Taranesh Reddy spoke to Radio New Zealand’s Dateline Pacific and said they face a tough task in Rio but added, “anything is possible”.

“When we qualified from the Oceania region we knew that there will be big teams we’re participating against from big countries at the Olympics. We expected that.

“We knew we would be in this kind of situation and we were prepared for it. We know those teams are well prepared, well polished, bigger sides but that’s all part of the game and we are looking forward for that and we are preparing very well for that.

Asked about what sort of mindset Fiji needed to take you take on the world’s top teams, he agreed the Games are going to be tough but said Fiji wanted to be competitive and do the Oceania region proud.

“It’s going to be huge games. We are preparing well for that and we hope that we will give these teams in our pool a good run.

“We understand that we cannot run away from the facts that these teams are big teams and we’ve got to prepare well if we want to compete with them.

The team went to Spain earlier this year in preparation for the sort of matches they can expect in the Olympic environment.

“We went and took the team to Spain for a three-weeks tour and we learnt a lot of things because in Spain, football is bigger than religion – so we had a great exposure in Spain.

“Then again we are going to Brazil next week where we are preparing to play four matches matches and get exposed.

“The most important thing for us is to expose our players to that level of football in those countries and once we come back then we will finalise the squad then we will be exposing some more players from this Olympic team in the Oceania Nations Cup in Papua New Guinea.

“Once we come back from the Brazil tour on the eighth we will straight away go into preparations for the Nations Cup, which starts at the end of the May.”

- Dateline Pacific