The La Roja Boys of Spain on Friday at the Parc des Princes in France took their 2nd Olympic football title in an eight goal drama beating hosts Les Bleus 5-3 in a Pulsating finals handled by Ref Ramon Abatti of Brazil.
France opened goals account at the 11th minute through Enzo Milot before Fermin Lopez got his brace scoring the equalizer in the 18th minute when Baenea provided an assist and the 2nd goal for Spain from Lopez was scored in the 25th minute. It was the 3rd goal Spain from Alejandro Baena in the 28th minute that closed the first half.
On resumption of the 2nd half Coach Henri of France pushed his boys to attack using Michael Olise, a Nigerian who chose France and does not like speaking French as the ‘enfant terrible’ of the French move. Olise played everywhere on the pitch tirelessly.
Coach Henri has already recommended that Nigeria’s Olise start playing for the French senior team immediately.
The tactics paid off when Michael Olise found Akliouche Maghes to put in the 2nd goal for France in the 79th minute and the 3rd goal that came via a penalty from pressure on the Spanish defence that made a defender to handle the ball in the box with a well taken penalty by Jean-Philippe Matata that forced the game to go into Extra Time at 3-3 on the score board.
Sergio Camello scored the 4th goal for Spain in the 100th minute from Adrian Bernabe assist and then this same Camello who is a super sub that came in for Alex Baena in the 83rd minute pounced on a pass from Arnau Tenas to seal it for Spain as he got his Brace in the 120+1 minute.
France made 12-7 shots on target with 9-8 shots off target; she dominated ball possession with 54-46% making 12-2 corner kicks meaning that France was not good with set pieces from the free kicks player Olise was not utilized ditto the corner kicks; France ended up with 18-14 foul calls but 2-5 yellow cards but the Spanish Goal keeper showed he was better with his 9-3 saves.
Legendary eagle eyed Italian Football referee, Pierluigi Collina born 13th February 1960 now 64, named “The World’s Best Referee” by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics, six consecutive times from 1998 to 2003 sat watching the Olympic Men’s football final. Collina is a Professional Financial Advisor, UEFA Head of Referees is still active as unpaid consultant to Italian Football Referess Association.
La Roja of Spain lost to African team, Egypt 1-2; beaten Dominican Republic 3-1 and also piped Uzbekistan 2-1 in group C before introducing virus into the Japanese High Tech team 3-0 in the quarterfinal and beat Morocco in the semis 2-1.
Spain is in her 6th appearance but won the title once while hosting in 1992 and had beaten Poland 3-2 at Camp Nou. She won the Silver twice in 1920 at Belgium and at Tokyo 2020 when she lost to the Samba Boys of Brazil 1-2 after Extra Time.
France surprised USA with 3-0 bashing; narrowly defeated Guinea 1-0 and also lashed New Zealand 3-0 in group A before beating Argentina 1-0 in the quarterfinal and also beat Egypt 3-1 after Extra Time in the semis.
France was in her 14th appearance at the Olympics. They were Gold medalists at the 1984 Games in America; got Silver in 1900 when she hosted and were semifinalists twice in 1908 and 1920.
A total of 96 goals was scored in the Men’s football event of 32 games showing three goals per match; with Moroccan player, Soufiane Rahimi as the highest goal scorer with 8 goals; Fermin Lopez of Spain who scored 6 goals as second best and Jean-Philippe Mateta of France with 5 goals as third highest scorer.
A total of 821,961 fans or an average of 25,686 fans per match were in attendance.
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The final ranking is Spain as Champions; France Silver; Morocco Bronze; Egypt 4th; Japan 5th; Paraguay 6th; Argentina 7th; United States 8th; Ukraine 9th; Iraq 10th; New Zealand 11th; Dominican Republic 12th; Uzbekistan 13th; Mali 14th; Israel 15th and Guinea 16th.
The Nigerian U23 Team did not qualify for the Olympics Games final but the Nigerian women were sent home after the group games without a victory.
Eniola Olatunji reporting for Patmos Media Line.
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