These are things that the chosen ones do, those who later, at football galas, take home the golden balls. Spain was stuck with its rival setting up barricades in its area, when an unnecessary foul by a Nigerian player, on the side of the area, was taken by Alexia Putellas with the necessary cunning to fake the cross and the African goalkeeper fell for the trick by taking a couple of steps forward. However, what the Barça player tried was not a pass looking for the fortune of a finish, but a shot to the opposite corner that found the goal. The one that gave Spain a good chance of being in the next round. After Japan’s victory over Brazil, a point against the African goalkeeper is worth it. canarinha.
1
Cata Coll, Irene Paredes, Laia Aleixandri, Ona Batlle, Oihane Hernandez, Mariona Caldentey, Teresa Abelleira, Alexia Putellas, Aitana Bonmatí, Lucia Garcia and Salma Paralluelo
0
Chiamaka Nnadozie, Oluwatosin Demehin, Osinachi Ohale, Michelle Alozie, Chidinma Okeke, Deborah Abiodun, Christy Ucheibe, Toni Payne, Rasheedat Ajibade, Asisat Oshoala and Esther Okoronkwo
Goals 1-0 min. 85: Alexia Putellas.
Referee Tori Penso
Yellow cards Asisat Oshoala (min. 36)
It was not easy for Spain to decipher the Nigerian team, which was very well trained in defence and disciplined when it came to sacrifice. In the first half, with Paralluelo inactive on the left, Lucia Garcia got bored of drawing runs on the right flank, but the Spanish midfielders were playing with earmuffs, so the drawings remained as sketches that were immediately thrown into the bin. The effort to play inside was moving but futile, because with Nigeria stuck in the trenches, moving around there was as complicated as returning from vacation on the Boulevard Périphérique in Paris.
Of course, the match was not being played in the capital, but on the edge of the Atlantic, in Nantes, a place of ill-fated memories for Spanish football in its, until yesterday, only official match against Nigeria and that elimination in the World Cup in France, and there were moments when that ghost appeared, when the Nigerians quickly came out on the counterattack. The clearest one was in a move by Ajibade, the Atlético de Madrid player, who missed the last control when she was already facing Cata Coll. In the first 45 minutes, only a shot by Alexia that Nnadozie cleared off the line could have ended in a Spanish goal. It was the last minute before half-time.
Montse Tomé corrected the situation at half-time and brought on Olga Carmona and Athenea to open up the play to the wings, crossed to Salma Paralluelo and, above all, thanks to the fresh air blowing from the wings, some chances came with crosses into the area that the Nigerian defence was unable to defend. A goal by Paralluelo, sent in by Olga, was ruled out by the VAR because Alexia had touched the ball with her ponytail; then the Barcelona forward headed the ball unopposed, but the ball went high. It was Putellas who had the clearest chance with a shot that, after the goalkeeper had beaten her, was cleared off the line by Ohale.
Then, when the Spanish were beginning to despair, Alexia Putellas’s genius came and gave Spain the victory, but Ihezuo was on the verge of tying the score on a counterattack that the Spanish players should not have allowed, and which Cata Coll saved with her exit.
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