Brazil's national women's football team left on Monday to
Sweden, where they will prepare for the FIFA Women's World Cup
China 2007.
According to a statement released on Monday by the Brazilian
Football Confederation (CBF), the team will hold the second part of
their preparation for the tournament in the sports center of the
club Umea IK.
The players joined on August 13 to practice at the CBF training
center in Rio de Janeiro. In Sweden, the squad will play two
friendly matches as warm up for the World Cup and, on August 30,
they will go to Japan, where they are scheduled to play another
friendly, against the Japanese team, on September 2 in the city of
Chiba.
The Brazilian delegation is expected to arrive in China on
September 4. The World Cup starts on September 10, and their first
adversaries will be the New Zealanders, on September 12 in Wuhan.
Still in the preliminaries for Group D, the Brazilians will face
China, on September 15 also in Wuhan, and Denmark, on September 19
in Hangzhou.
On July 26, the Brazilians won the gold medal in the Pan
American Games by beating the US 5-0 in Rio. At the time, Umea's
striker Marta, holder of the 2006 FIFA World Player of the Year
prize, was the first woman to leave her footprint at the Maracana
Stadium's Walk of Fame, which pays homage to football legends like
Pele and Franz Beckenbauer.
(Xinhua News Agency August 21, 2007)