STONEY HAPPY WITH FRIENDLIES

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The captain of the England Women’s national football team, Casey Stoney, has said that she is very happy that her team will play the friendly matches against Japan and Canada before the European Championship finals which will take place in July.

England will first face Canada on 7th of April at Rotherham and then, will face Japan on 26th of June at Burton.

When asked about those two upcoming friendly matches, Stoney said, “It’s great that we will face a couple of very strong teams before such a big tournament.”

“Canada had defeated us in the Olympics. But, they hadn’t outplayed us in that match. We had our chances, but, we couldn’t capitalize on them. We have learnt a lot from that match and now, we are ready to avenge that loss.”

“Japan is a very strong side. They have a lot of class players and they are one of the best sides in the world at the moment. So, if we manage to defeat them, it will certainly make us more confident before the European Championship finals.”

“We had defeated Japan in the group stages of the World Cup 2011 and we are capable of doing that again.”

England had beaten Japan by 2-0 in a Group B match played at Impuls Arena, Augsburg on 5th July, 2011.

Before these two friendly matches, the England team will take part in the Cyprus Cup which is going to be played Next month. In that tournament, England will play against New Zealand, Italy and Scotland in the group stages.

When asked about her team’s chances in the Cyprus Cup, Stoney said, “We had won this competition in 2009 and we can do that again if we play up to our potential. But, right now, we are concentrating only on the group matches. First, we want to qualify for the knock out stages and then, we will see from there.”

NEPAL LADIES DO IT

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Nepal women football team has defeated Kuwait in an International friendly match played at Qadisiya Stadium, Hawaii. The Nepalese team won the match by a huge margin of 8-0. The Kuwait team was completely outclassed in front of its home ground. The Nepalese players were in fine form and they played better than the expectations. The margin with which Nepal won clearly suggests that it was a one sided encounter.

The Nepal team has visited Kuwait to play a couple of friendly games. The first of them was played here today. The other one will be played on Monday.

The Nepal team was playing without its skipper and star player Jamuna Gurung. Gurung was out because of the injury that she had discovered while playing in the National Women’s League three weeks back. In her absence, the team was led by Chandra Bhandari.

The Nepal team was on attack right from the very beginning. The first goal was scored in the very first minute of the match by Sanjana. The lead was doubled just after a few minutes with the goal of Anu Lama. Thereafter, the Nepal team didn’t let Kuwait settle down at all.  They kept on attacking and kept finding the net at regular intervals.

Anu Lama was the stand out performer for Nepal in the match. She found the net on four occasions and took the match out of the reach of the Kuwaiti team. Apart from Anu, the other players who scored goals for the Nepal team in the match were Sanjana, Dipa Adhakari, Chandra Bhandari and Laxmi Poudel.

After the match, the skipper of Nepal, Chandra Bhandari said, “It’s a great win for us. We generally don’t get opportunity to play too many international games. So, we were looking forward to performing well on this tour. We have started brilliantly. Hopefully, we will carry on this form in the second match as well.”