Women's World Cup 2015: Ivory Coast find 'positive points' after being thrashed 10-0 by Germany

Embarrassing result on Day 2 of the tournament

Germany celebrate after Alexandre Popp scores against the Ivory Coast (Getty Images)

The result many in the women’s game feared arrived on day 2 of the World Cup when Germany scored double figures against an Ivory Coast team that was so badly outclassed their star performer, despite the drubbing, was goalkeeper Dominque Thiamale.

Germany are the world’s best team, twice World Cup winners and six-time consecutive winners of the European Championships. Ivory Coast are ranked 67 in the world, were making their debut at this level and qualified after reaching the semi-finals of the African championships. They were powerful, but out of their depth both tactically and technically. Celia Sasic scored a 28-minute hat-trick and Anja Mittag also hit a treble..

Such results, which damage the credibility of the women’s game, have not happened since Germany put 11 past Argentina in 2007, but were always possible once the competition was expanded to 24 teams. When the4 draw pitted these two teams together they became likely. Nevertheless, without exposure to this level of competition teams such as Ivory Coast will not get better. Besides, it is only a year since another German team went 5-0 up inside 30 minutes in a World Cup semi-final, the men’s, against Brazil, before easing up to win 7-1.

Coaches can usually find a jewel in rubble and Clementine Toure, Les Elephantes coach, said: “From this game, we have positive points we can take out - the experience. It's our first participation in the World Cup, and there was a great crowd here. Our girls discovered something today - a high level of competition, and it did have an effect on us a little bit. We must forget the score from today, forget the negative points, and learn from this.”

In the other Group B game, also in Ottawa, Norway beat another debutant,Thailand, 4-0 though the biggest cheer from the 21,000 crowd was for a penalty save by Thailand’s Waraporn Boonsing.