1 December 2008
Lagos — The ten-year domination of Nigeria in Africa's women football came to an uncelebrated end at the weekend in Equatorial Guinea when the host country's recorded a 1-0 victory over the Super Falcons in the semi final stage. The Nigeria side had the prospect of their crown falling off coming to them from the moment they arrived the sixth edition of the Africa Women Championship.
Their sealed fate began to manifest when they struggled to take a lone goal drawn and a point in their opening match against Ghana.
They followed that up with another stalemated match with Tunisia; 0-0. However, faced with a shock exit in the first round, they rallied to a 1-0 defeat of South Africa in their last group match to secure their advancement ticket to their disastrous semi final berth.
At the weekend, they again failed to subdue Cameroon in their third place match and had to go through the dice game of penalty shootout to take a something out of the tournament; they edged out the Cameroon side 5-4 to win bronze.
The lack of confidence of the Falcons had begun to manifest after their 1-0 victory against the Banyana Banyana side, which had given them the semi final ticket.
The moment they got their qualification status, the team and the Nigeria camp had started crying wolf over the gender of their next opponents, the Equatorial Guinea.
Asking for test, they said they suspected two of the players of the host were either male or they were hermaphrodite. As it turned out the host team, peddling a few naturalised Nigerians such as Okoro Gloria and Nnamdi Amarachi, were going to end up their nemesis.
The Falcons have won every edition of the cup since its inception in 1998.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
