By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
Bayelsa Queens football club of Yenegoa have won themselves a bragging right in Africa as they finished third in the just concluded 2nd CAF Women’s Champions League final in Morocco.
Bayelsa Queens which represented West African Football Union (WAFU) Zone B played five matches, won three and lost two.
The Prosperity Girls lost 1-0 to Mamelodi Sundowns in first match but bounced back to beat TP Mazembe women’s FC of DR Congo
and Egypt’s Wadi Degla women’s to amass six points in two matches to finish second behind Mamelodi Sundowns as both qualified for the semi final stage.
Bayelsa Queens however lost 1-0 in the semi final to host and the eventual champions, ASFAR Club of Morocco just as the Nigeria Women’s Football League (NWFL) champions made amend in the 3rd Place Match against Simba Queens of Tanzania by running away 1-0 winners.
This vital victory guaranteed Bayelsa Queens the tournament’s Bronze medal and a whopping sum of $200,000.00 (N150,000,000.00) in prize money courtesy of CAF for their efforts in reaching the last four teams.
Meanwhile, Bayelsa Queens have out performed their compatriots and last year’s West Africa Football Union (WAFU) B second representatives, Rivers Angels FC.
The Port Harcourt-based club lost their two group matches to ASFAR of Morocco 3-0 and Mamelodi Sundowns 1-0 in the 2021 CAF Women’s Champions League held in Egypt to finish third in Group even as a 4-0 trashing of Vihiga Queens of Kenya in the third game failed to help the club to reach the semi final stage thus crashing out of the competition.
Although Bayelsa Queens’s 3rd place finish is seen in Nigeria as a massive achievement, keen followers of women’s football can argue that Nigeria’s dominance in women football on the continent is fast fading away.
For two years running, Nigeria’s champions Bayelsa Queens and Rivers Angels have failed to beat both Moroccan and South African champions, ASFAR and Mamelodi Sundowns respectively.
While ASFAR beat Bayelsa Queens in the group match this year, Rivers Angels lost scandalously to ASFAR and Mamelodi Sundowns in 2021 edition of the competition as the so-called dominance of the West Africans was not evident in the Nigerian champions, losing their first two group games and failing to score a single goal in those matches said it all.
