The national U20 women’s team, the Falconets survived a big scare in Lilogwe against their counterparts from Malawi before booking their ticket to this year’s FIFA U20 Women’s world cup in Poland.
The Malawians almost made good their threat of stopping Nigeria and boosting their own profile in Africa, when they erased Falconets two goals within 56 minutes on Saturday.
The goals were courtesy of a brace from Faith Chimzimu, but with defeat obviously staring the Nigerian girls in the face, they had to dig deep to turn around the fortunes of the game through Precious Oscar’s strike in the 62nd minute.
The solitary goal was enough to guarantee the Falconets a ticket to Poland despite losing 1-2 but qualified on 3-2 aggregate having won the first leg in Ikenne 2-0 last weekend.
The result of the game however remains a wake up call to the administrators that other countries are gradually catching up with Nigeria in women’s football.
The Falconets, have appeared at every edition of the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup finals since the competition came into being, as an U19 tournament, in 2002.
The Falconets were at Canada 2002 and Thailand 2006 (the two tournaments were for U19 players).
It became an U20 competition before the 2006 finals in Russia, where Nigeria also featured.
They were also at Chile 2008, Germany 2010, Japan 2012, Canada 2014, Papua New Guinea 2016, France 2018, Costa Rica 2022 and Colombia 2024.
