These are things that the chosen ones do, those who later, at football galas, win the golden balls. Spain were stuck while their rivals set up barricades in their area, when an unnecessary foul by a Nigerian player on the edge of the area took them out. Alexia Putellas with the necessary mischief to fake the center and make the African goalkeeper fall for the deception by taking a few steps forward. What the Barça player tried, however, was not a shot looking for the luck of a shot, but rather a shot into the opponent that found the goal. The one with the Spanish victory that gives them a good chance of the next round. After Japan's victory over Brazil, it is worth a point against the canary island.
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Cata Coll, Laia Aleixandri, Ona Batlle, Oihane Hernández, Irene Paredes, Aitana Bonmatí, Lucía García, Mariona Caldentey, Teresa Abelleira, Alexia Putellas and Salma Paralluelo
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Chiamaka Nnadozie, Chidinma Okeke, Oluwatosin Demehin, Osinachi Ohale, Michelle Alozie, Toni Payne, Rasheedat Ajibade, Deborah Abiodun, Christy Ucheibe, Esther Okoronkwo and Asisat Oshoala
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, hard-working in defence and disciplined at the moment of sacrifice. In the first half, when Paralluelo was inactive on the left, Lucia García bored drawing unmarked players on the right wing, but the Spanish interiors played with earmuffs, so that the drawings remained sketches that immediately went to the bin. The attempt to play inside was touching but futile, because with Nigeria stuck in the trenches, traveling there was as complicated as returning from a holiday along the Boulevard Periférique in Paris.
Of course, the match was not played in the capital, but on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, in Nantes, a place where Spanish football cherishes an unfortunate memory in its only official confrontation with Nigeria until yesterday and the elimination from the World Cup in France, and there were moments when that spirit appeared, when the Nigerians quickly counterattacked. The most obvious, in an action by Ajibade, the player of Atlético de Madrid, who missed the last control when she was already facing Cata Coll. In the first 45 minutes, only a shot from Alexia that Nnadozie took over the line could end in a Spanish goal. It was the last minute before half-time.
Montse Tomé corrected during the break and put Olga Carmona and Athenea on the field to open the game on the wings, they crossed Salma Parallelo and above all, thanks to the new air blowing from the sides, some options appeared in the center of the area that the Nigerian defense could not defend. A goal from Paralluelo, sent by Olga, was annulled by the VAR because Alexia had touched the ball with her ponytail; then the Barcelona forward finished with an unopposed header, but the ball went high. It was Putellas who had the clearest chance from a shot that, passed by the goalkeeper, Ohale took over the line.
When the Spaniards began to despair, the genius of Alexia Putellas came who gave victory to Spain, who nevertheless saw how Ihezuo was about to launch a counterattack that the Spanish players should not have allowed, and who saved Cata Coll with his departure.
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