A first half penalty kick from Rasheedat Ajibade was enough to secure a crucial three points and keep Nigeria’s hope of advancing to the knockout stage alive.
Monica Iheakam
Nigeria’s U-20 Women got their World cup campaign back on track with a 1-0 win over Haiti in France .
A first half penalty kick from Rasheedat Ajibade was enough to secure a crucial three points and keep Nigeria’s hope of advancing to the knockout stage alive.
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Falconets lost their opening match to Germany, 1-0 on Monday and the win moved the African favourites up to second place on three points behind Group D table leaders, Germany.
Nigeria’s final group game would be on Monday against China who is third with level points with Nigeria, while Haiti is at the bottom without any points from two matches. Seventeen year-old goalkeeper, Chiamaka Nnadozie, was named the ‘Dare to Shine’ player of the match.
There are four groups of four with the top two teams progressing to the quarter-final stage.
Only four teams had contested every edition of the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, and Nigeria is a proud member of that elite club along with Brazil, USA and Germany.
Falconets had also graced the final twice, losing to Germany in both 2010 and 2014, either side of their run to the 2012 semi-finals, when USA came out on top.
Aside from those brushes with glory, Nigeria reached the quarter-finals in 2004, 2006 and 2008, having failed to progress from the group stage during the first edition in 2002 – and they fell again at the first hurdle at the most recent tournament in 2016.
Meanwhile, Africa’s other flag bearer, Ghana’s hopes of qualifying to the last eight were dashed with a 4-0 defeat to the Netherlands on Wednesday.
