Falconets Practice Penalties for U.S.A.

Penalty shoot-out dominated today's training of the Nigeria U-20 Women National Team ahead of tomorrow's (September 4) semifinal clash against the United States of America at the on-going FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in Japan.

The Edwin Okon led coaching crew are not taking anything for granted since it was through penalties that Nigeria defeated the Americans two years ago in Germany.

"Anything can happen at this stage even though we have always practiced penalties during our training sessions. But this time we felt it was pertinent to step up the tempo because of the possibility of the match going into extra time," he said at a Pre-Match Conference on Monday.

Okon who has continued to hinge the team's success on determination and a renewed spirit said most of the mistakes observed in the previous matches have been corrected

"We had four days to work on the Players weaknesses and strengths and l can say that the response from them has been very encouraging," he added.

Ironically both Nigeria and the U.S.A. faced resilient opponents in their  quarter final matches that went into extra time. While Nigeria won by a lone goal against Mexico, U.S.A. edged out North Korea 2-1 to move into the last four.

U.S.A. Champions of two U-20 Competitions have been in the semi final five out of six times, while Nigeria will making its second consecutive appearance.

Incidentally it was Nigeria that knocked them out in the quarter final two years ago 4-2 in a penalty shoot-out after regular time ended 1-1.

Meanwhile FIFA badged referee, Esther Staubli who handled the Argentina versus Canada group match will be in charge of today's encounter that comes up at 8am in Nigeria and 4pm (Japanese time).

A native of Switzerland but fluent in German, Staubli has been a referee since 2000 but became internationally acclaimed in 2006.