Super Falcons in Revival Battle Against Spain

2024 Paris Olympics

After going down 1-0 against Brazil in their first group match on Thursday, the Super Eagles will take on Spain tomorrow  at the Stade de la Beaujoire, Nantes, France, in an encounter they must avoid defeat for a chance to progress to the knockout stage of the women’s football event of the 2024 Olympic Games.

World champions Spain began their hunt for an Olympic gold medal with a hard-fought come from behind 2-1 defeat of a decent Japanese side and now face a Nigerian team that suffered a slender 1-0 loss to Brazil a day after.

Coached by Montserrat Tome Vazquez in the aftermath of the sexism scandal within the Spanish FA after they won the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, Spain have an abundance of quality and talent and will fancy their chances of going all the way in this competition.

They went behind early on to Japan, though, in their opening game when Aoba Fujino scored an excellent free-kick. However, the excellent Aitana Bonmati notched an equaliser about 10 minutes later before Mariona scored a 74th minute winner for the Spanish.

As one of the lowest ranked teams in this summer’s Olympic campaign, the Nigerians performed admirably in their opening game to restrict a lacklustre Brazilian side to just a one-goal defeat at the Matmut Atlantique in Bordeaux.

The Brazilians, with their extremely experienced squad, did eventually get themselves ahead in the 37th minute via Gabi Nunes but they couldn’t build on their lead with Nigeria impressively actually giving as good as they got for the most part.

Spain are the world number one in FIFA’s Women Rankings and they are the world champions with an excellent array of UEFA Women’s Champions League winners but they did lack a bit of fluency against Japan. Nigeria however proved themselves to be difficult to play against and breakdown against Brazil.

The match will be televised live on Sporty TV channel on StarTimes.