By Harry Awurumibe, Africa’s No.1 Women Football Journalist, Abuja
A first half brace scored by captain Rasheedat Ajibade ensured that the ‘New Face’ Super Falcons beat visiting Les Fennecs in the first match of the double-header International friendlies between Nigeria and Algeria’s senior women’s football teams at Remo Stars Stadium in Ikenne, Ogun state on Saturday evening.
Hugely talented Ajibade broke the deadlock in the 24 minute to put Nigeria ahead while she scored her second on the day, a sublime long ranger in the 43 minute as Nigeria led Algeria 2-0 at the end of first half.
On resumption, Super Falcons continued from where they stopped as
nothing excites more than the confidence displayed by the predominantly home-based side sprinkled with few over-seas professionals put together by interim manager Justin Madugu and his assistants Ann Agumanu-Chiejine and Auwal Makwalla.
Reminiscent of the Super Falcons of the Golden Era of 1998 to 2005, the Nigerian women played a passing game and the blend between the home based and foreign-based players has given hope of better days ahead.
In fact, the overall performance of Super Falcons made many hardly tell that Algeria’s ‘Green Ladies’ as the team is also called fielded a squad dominated by Europe-based professionals.
Despite the hot weather condition on the day, Super Falcons did not look troubled as they showed no fatigue while maintaining sharpness up front with darting runs from Gift Monday and Esther Onyenezide.
However, inspite of the scorching heat at Remo Stars Stadium in Ikenne, the Algerians tried so much to mitigated the first half damage by not letting in more goals as they frustrated efforts made by the host team to increase the scoreline.
Reminiscent of the Super Falcons of the Golden Era of 1998 to 2005, the Nigerian women played a passing game and the blend between the home based and foreign-based players has given hope of better days ahead.
Also, it was a decent outing from the Nigeria Women Football League (NWFL) stars at Ikenne and a repeat performance at Mobolaji Johnson Arena at Onikan, Lagos next Tuesday, October 29, 2024 will confirm that Nigeria has abundant talents waiting to be harnessed.