By

Eniola Olatunji 

North Korea on Wednesday night at Cali, Colombia bulldozed their way into their fourth Final of the world U20 women football tournament with a lone strike in the first half against the Yankee Babes of USA.

Playing their sixth semifinal match, Song-Gyong laced a pass to Il-son Choe to score a marvelous goal in the 22nd minute. It was her 4th goal in the tournament having scored against Netherlands and a brace against Costa Rica.

The Americans played the game of their life some 15 minutes to end the match laying siege in the 18 yard box with sporadic passes to get an equalizer but the North Korean defence refused to fall like the German wall.

Photo by Eniola Olatunji shows the Korean Captain leading the “Thank you wave” to the fans in Cali.

In the desperado, the only two yellow cards of the match were flashed at Dudley in the 36th minute and Riley in 90+4 minutes in the game that USA could not make more than 3-5 shorts on target where North Korea got 18-7 shots at goal but the Koreans squandered an opportunity of 12-3 corner kicks meaning they are not that good at set pieces.

The USA team will now meet the loser of the Japan versus Netherlands 2nd semifinals coming up at 0200 hours of Thursday.   

The USA U20 women and their North Korean counterpart met thrice with each team getting a win and there was a draw in which there were 4 goals to show off with. The game played on 30th August 2012 at Saitama Japan was won by USA 2-1 in the quarterfinal of the tournament; At Toronto in Canada on 16th August 2014 which ended 1-1 after Extra Time, North Korea won 3-1 via penalty kicks and at the SJG in Papua New Guinea on 29th November 2016 North Korea won at the quarterfinal 2-1.

USA lost to Spain by a lone goal; defeated Morocco 2-0 and beat Paraguay 7-0 at the group games; she edged out Mexico 3-2 in the Round of 16 games and introduced virus into the German Machine equalizing 2-2 with two late goal and winning Germany 3-1 on penalties in the quarterfinals thereby scoring 14 goals and conceding 5.

The USA are in their 10th appearances and has won the title thrice in 2002 Maiden Games in Canada where she beat Canada by a lone goal; Chile 2008 where she beat North Korea 2-1 and Japan 2012 where  she beat Germany by a lone goal.

She lost the Bronze to Japan by a lone goal at Papua New Guinea 2014 also lost the Bronze at Russia 2006 to Brazil 6-5 on penalties after a goalless Extra time and won Bronze at Thailand 2004 beating Brazil 3-0. 

North Korea shocked the team from Maradona’s Argentina 6-2; lashed Costa Rica 9-0; and disciplined Netherlands 2-0 at the group stages before thoroughly thrashing Austria 5-2 at the Round of 16 matches and piping the Samba Girls of Brazil by a lone goal in the quarterfinal scoring 23 goals and conceding 4.

North Korea in her 9th appearances won the title in Russia 2006 in a 5-0 slam of China; won again at Papua New Guinea 2016 by beating France 3-1. She got the Silver at Chile 2008 when she lost to USA in the final and placed 4th at Canada 2014 losing to France 2-3. 

The 2nd semifinal will be played at Cali at 0200 hours between High Tech Japan that has scored 16 goals so far and conceded only one scored by Nigeria in the Round of 16 matches confronting the Dutch Babes of Netherlands who scored 9 goals but conceded 8 goals.

Ref Karen Hernandez of Mexico will be in charge of the 2nd semifinal in Cali in a few hours to come.

The 3rd Place match for the Bronze medal will be played on Saturday 21st September at 2200 hours while the grand finale is on Sunday 22nd September also at 2200 hours.