In the other Group A fixture, Algeria defeated Senegal 2-0 at the Olympic Stadium. Maureen Dafeur of Bristol City opened the scoring from the penalty spot in the 42nd minute before FC Nantes forward Melissa Bethi sealed the win with an 88th-minute strike.
Senegal coach Mame Moussa Cisse has promised to turn things around and bounce back in their next match against Kenya.
“Mentally, we need to get the girls back on track very quickly. We need to make them understand that this is part of the competition,” said Cisse.
“That some teams might have a slow start but still end up in the competition. We’re going to study our opponent carefully. We’re going to try to win. We have to win this match because we’re already out of contention.
“It’s imperative that we win this match. We’ll try to do it by respecting our style of play and what we’ve put in place so far. I think that if we play the way we know how, we have the chance to win this match and get back into the competition.”
On losing against Algeria, Cisse said: “We’re very disappointed. We needed to win this first match to get off to a good start in the competition.
“Unfortunately, we lost due to unforeseen circumstances. We started the match well, playing a good 30 minutes. We pressed our opponents high up the pitch and prevented them from playing.
“We created chances but failed to convert them. That’s when we left ourselves vulnerable. We dropped back and gave the opposition too much space.”
Cisse added: “We came back in the second half to try and equalize. But we conceded a second goal due to an individual error.
“That game is over. It’s not the result we were expecting, but we need to regroup quickly. There’s another match coming up very soon (against Kenya, on July 30th).”
