Before that the German media remarked on how the door opened up for their team, and after a pleasant 3-0 victory the image looked much rosier. In the first five-half minutes, Sara Dabritz scored two goals for Alexandra Popp, her 100th National Team appearance, and Nigeria could not react despite a high level of second-half. The goals of late Lea Schuller were the icing of the cake for women of Martina Voss-Tecklenburg, who are waiting on Monday to see who will be faced in the quarter-final next Saturday. The result of the match between Sweden and Canada.
“That first goal gave us some safety, but then we allowed Nigeria to get back into the game a little bit. After the break, we were very dominant.”
Alexandra Popp, Player of the Match
DFB Frauen still must admit at this event and 372 minutes in the Women’s World Cup have now not been infringed on their defense. In five world cup games, no African squad scored against Germany.
“I think we showed the whole world that Nigeria have a team that has improved a lot. Of course you’re not satisfied to go out but you also have to recognise where we came from – and we’re just not ready yet. It’s important to play high-level teams like Germany because the players can see that even the smallest mistakes get punished. But the second half was really good and now we just need to focus on improving and using all the FIFA dates to play matches. Because we have some really talented players back in Nigeria.”
Thomas Dennerby, Nigeria coach
The Nigerian Super Falcons is the start of the path. Although they are deceived to leave France 2019 in this way, they have fulfilled their goal of moving forward from the band and Thomas Dennerbi has some important courses. They appear positive to have discovered some youthful athletes who could form the long-term pillars of the team.
“Coaches are never 100 per cent happy but that was a great performance and it’s fantastic to be in the quarter-finals. We’ve played four very tough matches in very different conditions, with the heat tough today, and we’ve dealt with all that very well. I’m very happy that we now have one week to relax and prepare for the quarter-finals. Part of that will be working on improving our performance in certain phases of the match, gaining more ground, becoming more confident and now allowing ourselves to get frustrated by small details.”
Martina Voss-Tecklenburg, Germany coach
3-0 might look like an easy Germany victory, on paper, but you just know that it wasn’t, if you saw the participants ‘ relief after that crucial third objective. While the DFB women’s performance worked a great deal before the match, Nigéria asked a lot of them and things would certainly have become much more interesting if the Super Falcons had transformed the glorious opportunity just after they restarted.
The Champions of 2003 and 2007 qualified for the 8th quarter-final in a row. This is their 30th victory; only the USA (36) attempted to win the contest.
Image: Kane Oosty/FIFA
