By Jennifer Amarachi
The Falconets, Nigeria’s under-20 women’s football team, were defeated 0-1 by their Mexican counterparts in a friendly match on Monday in Bogota.
The final training game for the FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup took place at the Club Banco de la República in Colombia’s capital city.
Mexico scored the only goal in the 15th minute with a volley by Alejandra Lomelí.
According to reports, the 2010 and 2014 silver medalists defeated Australia 2-1 on Friday in preparation.
Following Monday’s encounter, Falconets’ head coach Christopher Danjuma stated that the game was their final warm-up before the tournament proper.
“The friendly matches were crucial for the Falconets as they have helped the team fine-tune their strategies and assess their readiness for the tournament.
“We won five of our six qualifying matches with healthy scorelines and have added victory over the Australians, even though we lost to the Mexico team.
“That the team played two international friendly matches and won one and lost one shows the girls are ready and we will work more on our lapses before the competition.
“ The fact that we are up against the Korea Republic and three-time winners Germany in our first two matches means we need to be at our best physically, mentally, and psychologically.
“Physically and mentally, I believe we are in shape. Psychologically, we are good also.
“The team left Nigeria for Colombia for two weeks so that we can play quality friendly matches in readiness and we have done that,” he said.
Nigeria will compete in Group D of the event, which runs from Saturday to September 22.
Nigeria’s campaign will begin on September 2 with a match against the Republic of Korea, followed by matches against Germany and Venezuela on September 4 and 7.
Spain are the competition’s defending winners, having won in Costa Rica in 2022.
