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The good news for Nuengrutai Srathongvian and Clémentine Touré is that Ottawa will be much warmer when they return for the 2015 Women’s World Cup than it was Monday.

The bad news is that their respective squads from Thailand and Ivory Coast will still have zero previous World Cup experience when they face favoured Germany and Norway, which have participated in all six editions of the tournament and between them have won three titles.

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“The challenge of this tournament will be that we are trying to gain points. It’s not that we are coming here just to play games, but our goal is to pass to the second round,” Srathongvian said through an interpreter after spending the better part of two days inspecting TD Place stadium, plus hotel and potential training facilities for the Group B teams that will be based in Canada’s capital for the start of the World Cup in June.

“We know that both (Germany and Norway) are teams with rich experience in the tournament. To prepare against them, first we will prepare to gain more stamina and become well prepared physically to face them. After that, we will determine which tactics, how we are going to play them.”