The Super Falcons, nine-time African champions will tackle world champions USA in an invitational tournament that will serve as build-up for the AWCON title defence.
Nigeria will be one of four participating teams at this year’s WNT Summer Series that will also have the Women A National Teams of host nation United States of America.
Officials said the tournament will also feature Jamaica and Portugal and it will be staged between June 8-17 at the Q2 Stadium in Austin, Texas and presented at AT&T 5G.
These are high-profile matches, which are expected to test the Super Falcons. The Falcons, now under new coach Randy Waldrum, won the Turkish Women’s Cup recently.
The meantime, the draw for the qualifying tournament of the 2022 African Women’s Championship will be conducted on Monday. A record 41 countries have entered for the competition.
Matches will be played at the BBVA Stadium in Houston and at the brand-new, $240million Q2 Stadium in Austin built by the newest club in the Major League Soccer, Austin FC. Both cities are in the State of Texas and the clash between the Super Falcons and the US Women A team will be the first-ever football match at the state-of-the-art Q2.
The glamour tournament, which also held in 2017 and 2018, will run between 10th – 16th June and will see the Super Falcons clashing with their Jamaican counterparts in Houston on the 10th before taking on Portugal three days later at the same BBVA Stadium. Their last match is against the USA squad, four-time winners of the FIFA World Cup and four-time winners of the Olympic football gold, at the Q2 Stadium on 16th June.
The match against Nigeria will mark the first time the USA has ever faced the Super Falcons outside of a world championship and it will be just the third-ever friendly against an African country, with the previous two coming against South Africa.
Once the teams arrive in Houston, and for the USA and Nigeria, in Austin, all the players and staffs will operate inside highly controlled environments at the host hotels. The staging trainings and the matches will fall under the comprehensive U.S. Soccer Return to Play Protocols and Guidelines and in accordance with the Concacaf Return to Play Protocols. Everyone entering the controlled environment will be tested for COVID-19 before traveling, upon arrival and periodically thereafter. The teams will not begin full team training until the results of all arrival tests are confirmed.
“In these COVID times, we’re grateful that U.S. Soccer has been able to organize a schedule of games for us to prepare for the Olympics and getting these three during the Summer Series against teams we don’t play very often will be important in helping us make the final decisions on the Olympic Team,” said U.S. Women’s National Team head coach Vlatko Andonovski.
Nigeria’s Head Coach, Waldrum said: “The Summer Series is an interesting event and the teams featuring are of very high quality. It is a great prospect for us as we continue to build ahead of the qualifying games for next year’s Women Africa Cup of Nations.”
The Confederation of African Football will hold the draw for next year’s Women Africa Cup of Nations in Cairo next Monday. The final tournament will be staged by Morocco.6
Nigeria and the USA have clashed five times previously, with four coming at the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and one in the Women’s Olympic Football Tournament. Both teams last met at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada in 2015, with the Americans winning 1-0. That was Abby Wambach’s final World Cup goal.