The football event at the Tokyo Olympics began on Wednesday with the women and African teams have not fared so well.
The Zambian team was crushed 10-3 by the Dutch team on Wednesday while the USA-the dominant women’s football team in the world were shocked 3-0 by Sweden.
Megan Rapinoe, afterward, said her team played ‘dumb’. “There’s a lot of stuff we can clean up. It’s not the way we wanted to start. I thought we were a little tight, a little nervous, just doing dumb stuff.”
The shocks continued on Thursday when former Olympic gold medal winners, Argentina were beaten 2-0 by the Australian team and the Mexican team took the French team-considered probable bets for the gold to the cleaners 4-1.
Also on Wednesday, 35-year-old Brazilian woman, Marta, became the first individual ever to score in five consecutive Olympic football tournaments in Brazil’s 5-0 over China. Her teammate, Formiga, at 43, also achieved the record of being the oldest player to appear in an Olympics football event, in her 30th appearance across seven Games.
Brazil beat Germany 4-2 with Everton forward, Richarlison helping himself to a 23-minute hat-trick. Brazil led 3-0 at the interval but the Germans through Nadiem Amiri and Ragnar Ache, who scored in the 54th and 87th minutes created hope of a likely comeback but veteran, Paulinho crushed that hope with a fourth goal in the fifth minute of added-on time.
There are no matches on Friday but the action resumes on Saturday with the USA facing New Zealand, hoping to get back on track.