Beijing (China) - The Nigeria U-23 Soccer team, aka the Dream Team have been drawn to play the Olympic soccer team from the USA, Netherlands, and Japan in the forthcoming Olympic men soccer tournament taken place in Beijing, China, this August.

The line-up for the group stage of the global competition, which will be staged in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang and Qinhuangdao from 6 to 23 August, threw up pairings that are interesting and exciting in equal measure.

Nigeria’s Dream Team would play their group matches in Tianjin. Before going for the draws, team coach, Samson Siasia had prayed not to meet Brazil in the preliminaries and God answered him pushing the South American giants to fight it out with China, New Zealand, and Belgium in Group C with their center at Shenyang.

Defending champions Argentina will have to go through Australia, and a pair of first-timers, Côte d’Ivoire and Serbia. Group D features two former gold winners Italy and Cameroon, with both Korea Republic and Honduras more than capable of causing major upsets.

In the women’s event, the Nigerian female team, the Falcons, under Coach Joseph Ladipo aka Jossy Lad, were not as lucky. The Falcons were grouped with Korea DPR, and two-time World Champions Germany and Brazil, heavyweight countries in female football. China were grouped with Sweden and Canada, who knocked them out in the quarter-finals of the FIFA Women’s World Cup USA 2003, while the defending champion US have been drawn together with 2000 Olympic champions Norway, alongside Asia’s emerging power Japan and New Zealand.

Twenty-eight sides discovered the hurdles they will have to overcome to reach the second round in this year’s Olympic Football Tournaments after the draw took place in Beijing, the capital of China PR.

Subscribe To Site:

Full Post Feed | Summary Feed | Comments Feed