Brazil’s Women’s Team to Win World Cup Opener

By Lisa Flueckiger, Senior Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil’s women’s football (soccer) team won their World Cup opening game against South Korea with 2-0 with goals from Formiga and Marta. The FIFA women’s World Cup, currently taking place in Canada, started on June 6th and will go until July 5th.

Formiga, with the real name Miraildes Maciel Mota, was elected as the best player of the game. She scored the first goal for Brazil against the South Koreans, making her with 37 years the oldest goal scorer in the history of the women’s World Cup.

It is the sixth World Cup for Formiga and probably her last. “I think the team is coming on well. We’ve put in a lot of hard work and I’ve got every faith in the project. We really believe we can do it this time. It’s my last World Cup and my dream is to take the Trophy back to Brazil at long last,” she told FIFA.com.

It was also Formiga who got fouled later in the game, giving a penalty kick to the Brazilians, which Marta converted expertly. It was the fifteenth goal for Marta in a World Cup game, making the five times elected best player of the world, the World Cup top scorer of all time.

“It was not that easy,” Formiga later said. “We got what we wanted, which was not to let them go out playing, because it is a team that if you give them space they come easy to goals.”

“There’s always a bit of tension in the first match, but we controlled it well and we showed good balance,” Vadao, the team’s coach, stated.

The next game of the Brazilian team will be against Spain on Saturday, June 13th at 5PM, before taking on Costa Rica on Wednesday, June 17th at 9PM.

The women’s World Cup takes place in six stadiums around Canada and is played all on artificial turf, a decision taken by FIFA that was heavily criticized by the players. The last World Cup had taken place in Germany in 2011 with Japan taking the title.