Historical past ebook: Nigeria on the 1999 FIFA Girls's World Cup, benchmark for the 2023 set

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Nigeria will head to the 2023 FIFA Girls’s World Cup in Australia/New Zealand with an eye fixed on the 1999 FIFA Girls’s World Cup Quater-final run as benchmark.

Not simply the Tremendous Falcons, that continues to be the very best end on the competitors by any African nation, so it could be historic if there’s a step additional for Zambia, South Africa, Morroco or Nigeria not forgetting Cameroon who might nonetheless qualify from the playoffs.

SUPER FALCONS SQUAD AT THE 1999 FWWC

Coach Ismaila Mabo was in control of the 20-woman squad which included the likes of Florence Omagbemi, Ann Chiejine, Yinka Kudaisi, Martha Tarhemba, Adanna Nwaneri, Eberechi Opara, Kikelomo Ajayi, Stella Mbachu, Rita Nwadike.

Gloria Usieta, Marvis Ogun, Prisca Emeafu, Judith Chime, Nkiru Okosieme, Maureen Mmadu, Florence Iweta, Nkechi Egbe, Persistence Avre, Mercy Akide and late Ifeanyi Chiejine.

THE GAMES

The Tremendous Falcons obtained their event to a flying begin with a 2-1 win over North Korea on the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, legendary ahead Mercy Akide and Rita Nwadike on the scoresheet to safe a primary FIFA Girls’s World Cup win.

The euphoria from that win will probably be crushed days later with a 1-7 loss to the USA in a recreation the Falcons drew first blood by means of Nkiru Okosieme within the 2nd minute.

Ismaila Mabo and the women will get better from the loss to safe a 2-0 win over Denmark on the Jack Kent Cooke Stadium close to Washington DC, to assert second spot in group B and attain the quarter finals.

Towards Brazil within the quater-final, the Tremendous Falcons produced a superlative efficiency to safe 3-3 regulation time rating after trailing 0-3 on the break.

Prisca Emeafu, Nkiru Okosieme and Nkechi Egbe the scorers for the Falcons who would later bow out following a golden aim scored by the Brazillians within the 104th minute.

AKIDE RECALLS MEMORABLE 1999 ADVENTURE

Mercy Akide a member of the Tremendous Falcons squad to the 1999 FIFA Girls’s World Cup shared recollections from the event with FIFA greater than twenty years after.

She stated “We had been prepared to do die for it. We went there with a mission: to set the next aim for African ladies’s soccer. We did that. ”

“We gave the whole lot we needed to make feminine soccer develop not simply in Nigeria however in Africa as a result of the sport wasn’t revered.”

” We needed to point out everybody that we might play, irrespective of the place we got here from or what we confronted to get there. We tried as African ladies to point out that we might do one thing that didn’t contain being at residence or within the kitchen or serving males, that we might play the sport.”

Twenty-fours since then, Girls Soccer in Africa has developed to a aggressive degree the place the Tremendous Falcons of Nigeria are not undisputed like within the days of Akide.

South Africa and Morroco have so developed their ladies soccer that each editions of the CAF Girls’s Champions League have been received by their golf equipment, whereas each additionally locked horns within the remaining of the final AWCON.

GOING FORWARD

Nigeria attain the Final-16 on the 2019 FIFA Girls’s World Cup, a regular commiserate with the quater-final place at a 16-team event.

On the 2023 version , Nigeria is drawn alongside Australia, Republic of Eire and Canada in Group B of the 2023 FIFA Girls’s World Cup and stand a good likelihood of progressing from the group.

The event will kick-off on July 20, 2023, the Falcons getting their event underway vs Canada on July 21.

Regardless of ending exterior the highest three on the final Africa Girls’s Cup of Nations, Nigeria ended 2022 as the highest ranked workforce on the FIFA rankings in forty fifth spot.

Captain of the workforce Onome Ebi in an interview final yr gave clue on what the Thomas Dennerby tutored women will probably be focusing on on the 2023 FIFA Girls’s World Cup.

” I wish to thank the NFF for his or her help all by means of our invitational tournaments proper from Turkey to US and plenty of others and now in Canada,” Ebi stated in a video printed on the Tremendous Falcons Twitter deal with.

“I’d say it’s actually serving to the workforce, it’s serving to the brand new gamers to mix with the outdated gamers and it’ll assist us go actually far if we carry on doing this.

“I consider they’ll carry on doing this for us as a result of they promise us we’re going to play as many matches and worldwide matches not simply Africa identical to we’re taking part in Canada. So I believe with this sort of competitors that they’ve promised us and they’re fulfilling their guarantees it can take us actually far.

“And I wish to thank them and admire them and I’ll nonetheless urge them to not cease as a result of we’d like extra of this and with extra of this we are going to go far. If we now have extra of this sort of friendlies, I consider there’s nothing God can not do and I consider in God as a result of I’m a Christian, we will win the World Cup, first, second, third give it to us I’m aiming in the direction of that.

“By the grace of God if I make my previous World Cup, I’m saying my final World Cup as a result of I don’t know what God would do, however in my final World Cup we’d go first, second, third and I belief my women.

“Thanks NFF we admire you however don’t cease, preserve making us pleased and we are going to make you and ourselves proud.” She concluded.

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