Nigeria, May 29, 2016 – Coach Bala Nikyu and team administrator, Mary Oboduku have arrived in Amman, Jordan for Monday’s draw ceremony for this year’s FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup. The duo left Nigeria on Saturday.
The draw ceremony will hold at the King Hussein Cultural Centre, Amman, and will segment the 16 qualified nations into four groups of four teams each. Already, the pots have been determined, in line with the ranking of the teams in the past four editions of the competition that was launched in New Zealand in 2008. Five extra points are allotted to continental champions, with Nigeria one of the beneficiaries.
Pot 1: Jordan, Japan, Germany, Korea DPR
Pot 2: Nigeria, Spain, Venezuela, Ghana
Pot 3: Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil
Pot 4: New Zealand, England, Paraguay, Cameroon
Nigeria has reached the quarter –finals in the last three editions of the competition (Trinidad and Tobago 2010, Azerbaijan 2012 and Costa Rica 2014), and qualified for this year’s finals after hammering Namibia and South Africa home and away.
Jordan hosted the Arab Games in 1999 but the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup is the country’s first major international tournament. Matches will take place in the capital, Amman as well as Irbid and Zarqa. The 5th FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup finals will hold 30th September – 21st October this year.
