[ 2011-06-27 ]

Nigeria beaten by France in World Cup opener
Nigeria's Super Falcons have been beaten in their
opening game at the 2011 Women's World Cup in
Germany.

They were beaten 1-0 by France in an entertaining
first match of the tournament.

Marie-Laure Delie got the only goal of the game to
give France a strong chance of progressing from a
group which also contains the hosts Germany and
Canada.

Nigeria performed well in defence and created
plenty of chances but could not find the final
touch.

They now find themselves bottom of the group, but
coach Eucharia Uche has not given up hope of being
able to make progress.

"The girls played a great game, we were just
unfortunate," she said.

"We will go back and work on [our finishing]
because if we had converted our chances we would
have been looking at a victory."

France started brightly and Nigeria goalkeeper and
captain Precious Dede was put under considerable
pressure, with Louisa Necib of Lyon creating
plenty of opportunities down the left.

But the Super Falcons defence did a good job of
keeping the French at bay and it was 0-0 at
halftime.

France finally broke the deadlock early in the
second period, when a rare example of poor Nigeria
defending allowed Delie to control a loose ball in
the box and fire home to make it 1-0.

The Super Falcons contributed greatly to an
entertaining game played in front of a decent
crowd of more than 25,000 in Sinsheim.

They will now prepare to play Germany and then
Canada in their remaining pool A games - Germany
beat Canada 2-1 in their game on Sunday evening.

Source - BBC

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