Under-20 World Cup Qualifiers: Mauritius Withdraw For Super Falconets

The Nigerian Under-20 Women’s team, Super Falconets, have advanced to the third round of the African Under-20 Women’s World Cup qualification campaign for Colombia 2024.

This came after the Mauritius Football Association informed the Confederation of African Football (CAF) of the nation’s Under-20 Women’s National team’s intention to withdraw from the match against the Super Falconets.

The Mauritian women were expected to host the opening leg of the qualifiers a week before the second leg which was initially scheduled to take place on October 14 at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja.

However, a letter from CAF to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) confirmed the changed plans, according to a statement from the NFF on Thursday, September 28.

“Kindly note that CAF was informed of the withdrawal of Mauritius FA from the African qualifiers of FIFA U-20 WWC 2024. Consequently, Nigeria is qualified for the next round of the competition and the missions of all officials of matches 37 & 38 are cancelled,” the message from CAF reads.

Mauritius qualified for the second round of the qualification after beating Chad’s under-20 women’s team and was expected to give the Super Falconets a very good run for their money in the third round. However, that won’t be as the Nigerian team moved to the next round on a platter of gold.

Two teams from Africa will compete in the Colombia 2024 U-20 Women’s World Cup, one of those teams is expected to be the Super Falconets.

The Nigerian team reached the quarterfinals of the 2022 edition of the tournament in Costa Rica before falling to The Netherlands 2-0.

The Super Falconets advanced to the Under-20 World Cup finals in 2010 and 2014, but both times they were defeated by Germany.

This is the second time in less than a man that a women’s team withdrew from an international qualification game for a Nigerian women’s team. Recall that Sao Tome and Principe women’s team withdrew from Women’s AFCON qualifiers against Super Falcons earlier this month.