By Harry Awurumibe
With the United States of America (USA) winning the FIFA Women’s World Cup trophy for the 4th time at the just concluded global football tournament in France and her players clearing all but two individual awards, Nigeria has rather made the list of indiscipline teams of the competition.
Nigeria’s Super Falcons have been adjudged the second most indiscipline team by the FIFA Technical Study Group (TSG) following the red card received by defender, Ngozi Ebere in the 3rd Group A match against host country, France in Rennes. Ebere was shown a second yellow card or Indirect Red Card (IRC) in the highly explosive match when she clattered with a French player in her own box 18.
Team Nigeria also raked in a total of 8 Yellow Cards, an average of 2 cards per match in the four games the team played in France to crown a bad outing and earned her the second most indiscipline team of the tournament.
Only Team Australia is worse than Nigeria after her player bagged a Direct Red Card (DRC) which attracts higher cumulative points than the IRC and a further 2 Yellow Cards to top the list.
In the third and fourth places in the list are Republic of South Africa with 1 Red Card and 6 Yellow Cards and the Three Lionesses of England with 1Red Card and 2 Yellow Cards in 7 matches.
Surprisingly, the Samba Girls of Brazil garnered a whopping 11 Yellow Cards in just 4 matches to make the top 5 list while Italy and Cameroon received 8 Yellow Card apiece in 5 and 4 matches respectively.
Meanwhile, Bronze Medal winners- Sweden, World Champions-USA and Silver Medalists- Netherlands completed the Top 10 in FIFA bad book. Sweden and USA got 7 Yellow Cards apiece and Netherlands had 6 Yellow Cards.
However, New Zealand nearly came out clean amongst the 24 teams in France with only 1Yellow Card even as it is baffling who France with 5 Yellow Card in 5 matches still managed to win the Fair Play Award.
