Nigeria\u2019s Falconets have much to do in the return leg of their 2016 FIFA<\/a> U-20 Women\u2019s World Cup African final round qualifying fixture after they could only edge South Africa\u2019s Basetsana <\/a>2-1 at the National Stadium, Abuja on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Top scorer Chinwendu Ihezuo put the Falconets in front on the half hour, sweeping home a brilliant pull out by fellow striker Chinaza Uchendu.<\/p>\n

Reigning world vice champions Falconets added a second a minute into added time of the first half, when winger Uchenna Kanu\u2019s shot was turned in by a Basetsana defender.<\/p>\n

Efforts by the Falconets, who also reached the final of the FIFA finals in Germany in 2010 and have played in every edition of the U-20 World Cup since it was launched in 2002, to increase the tally in the second half did not come to fruition. And just as they were thinking they had a 2-0 lead into the second leg, the Basetsana earned a penalty in added time of the second period and Gabriela Salgado made no mistake from the spot.<\/p>\n

It means the the return leg, set for the Makhulong Stadium in Tembisa, outside Johannesburg on Saturday, November 7 is delicately poised, and both teams have all to play for in the race to Papua New Guinea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nigeria\u2019s Falconets have much to do in the return leg of their 2016 FIFA U-20 Women\u2019s World Cup African final round qualifying fixture after they could only edge South Africa\u2019s Basetsana 2-1 at the National Stadium, Abuja on Saturday. Top scorer Chinwendu Ihezuo put the Falconets in front on the half hour, sweeping home a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[75,84,116,43,435,196,30,144],"class_list":["post-4645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-falconets","tag-amaju-pinnick","tag-caf","tag-featured","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-u-20-womens-world-cup","tag-mohammed-sanusi","tag-nff","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}