Experience of Yankey and co should see England through the group stage

Women's Football / / 10 September 2007 / Leave a Comment

Women's football expert Perfecseun previews the action from Groups A and B

Another edition of the Women's World Cup and each time the quality getsbetter. Even though there has been significant progress made by a lot ofteams at women's football level, it is still the usual suspects that dominate the betting market.

Germany, the current holders and USA, the two time world champions, arethe worthy favourites to win the 2007 edition. It is hard to find a team that will come out of the remaining 14 teams to challenge thesetwo. Having said that, there is always value and surprises in the Women´s World Cup.

Let´s start by having a look at the likely qualifiers from the groupstage into the last 8. Group A sees Germany mixing it with England,Japan and Argentina. For a big footballing nation, the Argentine female team can be ruled out . They are just making up the numbers and for
their first game their Coach will be suspended.

I can't see Argentina hurting any team in this group but Japan on the other hand is worth a mention and could upset England to claim second place. As long as Germany performs to its potential, and there's no reason why they shouldn't, the key battle isfor 2nd place. Japan vs England is the one to watch in this group and Iwould give the edge to England who have experience to count on. This is the best chance England has to live up to potential and forge on to thequarterfinal stage for the first time.

Japan is a fast improving team and they are putting out a well groomed team whose main purpose was for the 2007 World Cup but experience is what counts at this level.

England´s team have a lot of experience in abundance and will strongly fancy their
chances.

Group B: Sweden, USA, Nigeria and Korea Republic. Again the top twoteams seem pretty obvious with the tournament favourite USA leading this pot. Sweden should finish second except Nigeria and Korea may have found away to keep the Swedes out.

Nigerian football is enjoying one of its best period with the U-17 male team in the finals of their World Cup in South Korea and the U-20 reaching the quarterfinals in Canada. The
female U-20 team last year reached the quarterfinal and that will be aninspiration for a lot of them who have made the step up to the senior team.

In 2003, Sweden beat both Nigeria and Korea at the group stage comfortably. This time round, Nigeria heads to China with a much better team - youthful and creative. Korea is much improved as well but camethrough a relatively weak qualifying phase. The key battle is how
Nigeria plays against Sweden and Korea as both teams will hope for
repeat performance of 2003 over Nigeria. USA qualifying top and Sweden 2nd.