Japan U-17 women\u2019s national team coach, Sadayoshi Shirai, has explained why his side lost 2-1 to Nigeria\u2019s Flamingos in the final of the 2026 FIFA U-17 Women\u2019s World Cup in Morocco.\n<\/p>\n
Shirai said his team could have had a better chance of winning the encounter if they had scored earlier against the Flamingos.\n<\/p>\n
Nigeria became the first African country to win the title thanks to goals from Oluebube Umejiaku and Awawu Bashiru. Fuki Ito scored a late goal for Japan.\n<\/p>\n
Speaking in his post-match interview, as reported by FIFA on Saturday, Shirai acknowledged Nigeria\u2019s strength, particularly their speed and physical power, which caused problems for his players.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all, I have to say that Nigeria were a very strong team. We understood their strengths, but there were moments when they managed to get in behind our defence. Even so, I think our players fought incredibly hard until the very end, doing everything they could to cope with Nigeria\u2019s speed and physical power.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI also believe that if we had managed to score earlier, we might have had a better chance of winning the match. I want them [Japan\u2019s players] to be proud of themselves. The way they fought until the very end of this World Cup will have inspired many people, and I hope they can take confidence from that,\u201d Shirai said.\n<\/p>\n
Japan reached the final after defeating North Korea in the semi-finals, while Nigeria booked their place in the title decider with a victory over Brazil.<\/p>\n
The Flamingos eventually defeated Japan to claim the U-17 Women\u2019s World Cup title.\n <\/p>\n
Source: <\/p>\n
Japan U-17 women\u2019s national team coach, Sadayoshi Shirai, has explained why his side lost 2-1 to Nigeria\u2019s Flamingos in the final of the 2026 FIFA U-17 Women\u2019s World Cup in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}