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GHANA, CAMEROON, OTHERS GO FOR NIGERIA’S SCALPS IN AFRICAN WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP

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BY APESIN ADEMOLA.

 

The 13th edition of African Women’s Championship opens at Accra Sports Stadium with Ghana attempting to beat Algeria and possibly go all the way to the final and lift the trophy for the first time.

 

The Black Queens have Nigeria’s Super Falcons, who open their title defence on Sunday against South Africa, to blame for not having won this tournament. On all three times of their reaching the final, Nigeria stopped the Ghanaian run – 1998, 2002 and 2006 – to acquire a record 10 titles in all (if the two previous editions before the championship format started in 1998 are counted).

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Now that Ghana will be hosting for the first time, expectations are that the Black Queens would acquit themselves this time.

 

The Black Queens lost steam in recent years as they failed to get out of the group stage and even missed the tournament, as it happened in 2012. But in the last edition (Cameroon 2016), they came back forcefully and won the bronze medals.

 

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However, the team have evolved with some new faces and brimming with confidence following encouraging results in friendly matches arranged to make up for not participating in the qualifiers as host nation.

 

Ghana’s opponents in the opening match of Ghana 2019, Algeria are one of the minnows in the continent. The Fennecs have appeared four times in the tournament and exited at the group stage of each of them. They were last in ranking in 2006 and seventh among eight teams in 2010 and 2014 African Women’s Championships.

 

In the other match of the day, Cameroon faces Mali.

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Like Ghana, Cameroon will hope to meet Nigeria later in the competition to settle old scores having been beaten four times in the final by the Super Falcons.

 

This is Mali’s seventh appearance in the finals but they are yet to cross the line from the group stage to the knockout rounds.

 

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Only Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea (twice) have lifted this title.

 

The top three teams in Ghana 2018 will represent Africa in next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in France.

 

Saturday’s fixtures…

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Group A: Ghana v Algeria (4:30pm), Mali v Cameroon (7:30pm)

 

Sunday’s fixtures…

 

Group B: Nigeria v South Africa (4:30pm), Zambia v Equatorial Guinea (7:30pm)

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Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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