Curtains on the 12th world U20 Women’s Football tournament shall be drawn this weekend with the Battle for Bronze on Saturday and the title on Sunday
On Saturday at the Stadion Miejski Lks Lodz in Poland at 5pm Italy and Columbia will lock horns in the Battle for Bronze medal while at the same venue on Sunday at 5pm the klieg lights will fall on three times title holders and defending champions North Korea as the try to outwit the Spanish spins to take their 4th title.
So far 50 matches have been played in the tournament with 179 goals scored having 36,102 fans or 722 fans per match which will be far less than the 100,000 fans expected to attend a single match of Manchester United in their newly built stadium.
Pau Comendador of Spain looks set to cart home the Golden Boot for Highest scorer with her 6 goals having Choe Yon A of North Korea who score 5 goals in contention for Annika Paz of Argentina who equally scored 5 goals has been sent out. Out of the 6 players that scored 4 goals each only two can snatch the position from Comendador but the two are also incidentally from Spain and they Marisa Garcia and Celia Segura.
FIFA has released final positions of the teams that have been sent out of the tournament. BRA is 5th, Ngr is 6th, Can-7th and 8th South Korea. All played quarterfinal matches.
Hosts Poland is 9th, Fra-10th, Arg-11th, USA-12th, Chi-13, Jap-14th, Eng-15th and Por 16th all were eliminated in the round of 16 games.
Leading the last batch is Ecu-17th, Gha-18, Mex-19th, Benin-20, CRC-21, Tan-22,Nzi-23 and NCL-24 all eliminated at the group stages.
Read Also:2026U20WWORLDCUP: Hosts Poland Out by Default: Scores Own Goal in 89th Minute.
WU20WCup Bronze: Tough time as Columbia battles Italy
Awards, and prizes, presentation of the trophy will be made on Sunday after the final match.
A very disturbing observation is that the threats of EUFA boycott of this tournament was effectively parried by FIFA. It was not cleat whether the Medical Department of FIFA was active at the tournament on Poland as there was no reported test for age cheating and there was only one reported doping test which was against Nigeria at the group stage. One wonders what happened to other nations. Were the reagents no more available or FIFA politics swallowed the tests?
Eniola Olatunji reporting for Patmos Media Line.
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