Un-Super Falcons crashed out of olympic female soccer
China - The Nigeria female representatives in the Beijing Olympic soccer tournament, Super Falcons, ended their Beijing Olympics campaign on Tuesday with no point from the group phase, scoring only one goal and conceding five.
The team lost to the highly rated Brazilian female team, in the last match of the Group F encounter with the latter coming from behind to win 3-1 against the Nigerian team.
Jorge Barcellos, the Brazil’s female football team coach, heaved a big sigh of relief after the Brazilian goal comeback.
The victory notwithstanding, Barcellos said after the encounter that the African champions made things difficult for his girls, especially the Falcons’ strikers.
He, however, noted that better organization swayed the match in favor of Brazil, adding that the goal conceded by his side was the elixir needed to wake up and deal with the Nigerian lasses.
“Nigeria’s quick strikers made our life difficult after the opening 20 minutes and our defensive line reacted slowly against them. “But after we conceded the first goal we began to organize ourselves better and improved our passing. And from there we played well until we won the game,” Barcellos said.
He confessed that the Group F was a difficult group, submitting that every team wants to beat Brazil. “We were in a difficult group. After last year’s Women’s World Cup we became the team most of sides are eager to defeat,” he noted.
It will be recalled that when both sides met last at the USA ‘99 Women’s World Cup, the Brazilians won 4-3, courtesy of the golden goal rule.
The Super Falcons and their Argentina female side ended up as the worst team of the female football event after the completion of the Group games on Tuesday.
Both countries were at the base of their groups with no point to show, having lost all their three games in a row with the same deficit of minus five and zero point.
New Zealand managed to draw one game despite parading the worst defence which leaked seven goals at group stage. However, Nigeria’s coach, Joseph Ladipo, believes there is no need to mourn.
‘’We are building a young team. The experience of the Olympics is great for the players. They need encouragement and we are going to talk to them to try and learn from this and be positive for the future.’’
Source: Tribune
August 27th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Good job girls, you did your best. If anybody says you didnt tell the person to shut up. If after treating you people the way you are treated and you gave your best, I think its worthy to commend you all for your effort. Our people usually say, better soup na money kill am, NFF need to wake up and take care of all of you if they expect s’thing bigger to come out of you otherwise, you guys did good in my opinion.