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)