FIFAWWC: Bookmakers tips Canada to beat Super Falcons
The Super Falcons begin their quest to win the FIFA Women’s World Cup against Canada as underdogs.
Canada are the favourites to win this match, with the Opta supercomputer giving them a 58.4% chance of winning.
This is Canada’s eighth consecutive appearance at a FIFA Women’s World Cup. The only edition they failed to qualify for was the inaugural tournament in 1991.
Despite having qualified for every single Women’s World Cup tournament, Nigeria has only reached the knockout stages twice in eight attempts so far.
The match against Super Falcons is one Canada that the North Americans will certainly feel they should be winning. Although Nigeria has plenty of World Cup pedigree, having played at every single edition of the tournament so far, Canada are reigning Olympic champions and will be far more hopeful of going deep in the tournament.
Many of the members of their squad who won gold in Tokyo in 2020 are still around, so they have plenty of experience in their ranks. Christine Sinclair has a whopping 323 caps to her name, while in Sophie Schmidt (221), Kadeisha Buchanan (131), Ashley Lawrence (117), and Jessie Fleming (115), Canada have four more players with over 100 international caps. Their English coach, Bev Priestman, spent two years as Phil Neville’s assistant with the Lionesses, and she knows what it takes to win a tournament, having been in charge in Tokyo and having also won the SheBelieves Cup with England in 2019.
The reigning Olympic title holders have always managed to reach the knockout stage in the following Women’s World Cup, while the USA has twice managed to win the World Cup straight after Olympic success, doing so in 1999 and 2015, so there is good reason to expect good things from Canada.
Nigeria, meanwhile, are the only African team to play at every single edition of the Women’s World Cup, but they hold the unwanted record of having the lowest goal difference in the history of the tournament (-43), winning just four of their 26 matches.
Since the turn of the century, they have failed to score in 12 of their 16 matches at the Women’s World Cup and have won only two of those games. However, perhaps crucially, one of those wins was a 1–0 over Canada back in 2011, while the other was at the most recent tournament – a 2-0 win over South Korea in 2019. You can see why Canada are favorites to win, but Nigeria do have plenty of quality in their squad, with lots of players who play their club football in Europe or the USA.
Barcelona’s Asisat Oshoala will be their key player at the tournament, having scored 30 goals in 41 international appearances so far. With a goal at this tournament, she would become the first African to score at three different Women’s World Cup tournaments.
Nigeria and Canada have met five times before, and two of those meetings have come in Women’s World Cups. Nigeria are unbeaten in those two World Cup meetings, but they came rather a long time ago – a 3-3 draw in 1995 and the aforementioned 1-0 win for Nigeria in 2011.
Canada has beaten Nigeria twice in friendlies in recent years, before the sides played out a 2-2 draw in their most recent meeting in April 2022. That day, Nigeria twice took the lead but was pegged back both times. Canada only just managed to rescue a draw in the 88th minute.
Both teams have a little too much experience of losing World Cup matches, with Nigeria having lost more games at WWCs than any other side (19), and Canada following close behind them having lost the third most (14).
The Opta supercomputer reckons it is more likely that Nigeria will make it 20 defeats by losing this one, as Canada has a 58.4% chance of picking up all three points to start Group B in the best way possible. However, Nigeria has won their last three games in the lead-up to this World Cup and will hope they can extend that run of form into the tournament itself. The Opta supercomputer gives a 17.8% chance of that happening.
