Germany have lined up their best team for the Semi-Final encounter with Korea as they hope to make it to the final of the FIFA U-20 Women World Cup for the first time on their home soil.
The German girls like the three other teams in the semi-finals are debuting but lead striker, Alexandra Popp believes they can beat Korea and move on to the final.
“The coach gave me the job of heading up the side and I think I’m doing quite well at the moment. The team are providing me with the service I need, and I just have to put the chances away,” she continued. “I was really looking forward to this World Cup because I knew I would have a team behind me that can really play football. That’s shown in the seven goals I’ve scored so far.”
The strong striker has scored seven goals in the tournament is angling for more goal and has been tipped among the ten nominees for the golden boot award
“The quarter-final win against the North Koreans was definitely the toughest match we’ve had. Now we need to stay fully focused and motivated and take each game as it comes,” said the FCR Duisburg starlet in an exclusive interview with FIFA.com. “Of course we’re hoping to win the title, but we can’t make the mistake of thinking it’s already in the bag. We have to remain disciplined. We respect all our opponents, something that’s very important at a tournament like this.”
Nigeria on the other hand is relying on the motivation by the country’s President, Goodluck Jonathan, who has dispatched a team made up of top ministers in his cabinet to Germany to watch this game.
Nigeria like Colombia do not have experience at this stage of the tournament, and are gunning for new records which make the encounter more interesting.
Golden booth nominee, Ebere Orji says they just want to be in the final: “Our target for now is the final. We’re not looking at our opponents achievement in this competition, we’re considering our feat, beating the defending champions was no mean achievement.
The West African country has undergone steady improvement over the recent past. In 2002 they were bottom of their group; in 2004 they finished third, which was enough to take them into the quarter-finals; two years later they were second before losing to Brazil in the last eight; and in 2008 they topped their group but fell to France in the quarter-finals.
The renowned ‘Nigeria spirit’, a never-say-die determination, gives them a good chance of going all the way this time. As does the level of fitness within the group, a result of the hard work masterminded by technical advisor James Peters in the four-week training camp held in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire.
“I told them that what a man can do, they can do even better,” Peters said. “I worked them as hard as I did my men’s teams when I worked in the US, and the results are there to be seen. Against USA we started very slowly and conserved our energies, and the final result was something we had all been dreaming about.”