United States’ Lili Chalupny scored what proved to be the decisive goal after just 55 seconds to give the Americans the win over Nigeria and the points it needed to win the group and advance into the women's World Cup quarter-finals.

The U.S. also reached the 50 matches without defeat milestone dating back to a loss to Norway in 2004, according to FIFA.

Two-time World champions, the U.S. took the early lead after Abby Wambach, the heroine of the match against Sweden, back-headed a throw-in to Chalupny, who put the ball on the grass and fired. The ball went after a deflection from a defender leaving Nigeria's goalkeeper Precious Dede with nothing to do than collect the ball from the net.
It was United States’ second win in Group B after their 2-0 win against Sweden and a 2-2 draw in the opening game against North Korea.

The Nigerians, Africa’s champions, gave the Americans some head-aches but in the first half the U.S. were more offensive and put a lot of pressure on the African defense. It seemed just a matter of time before the attacking trio of Chalupny, veteran Kristine Lilly, and Wambach would score the second, but on a wet surface after heavy rain brought by Typhoon Wipha to the Hongkou Stadium it didn’t happened.

Nigeria is eliminated from the tournament as they also lost to the North Koreans 2-0 and drew 1-1 with the Swedes.

In the other deciding match of the group, Sweden defeated North Korea 2-1 on Tuesday in Tianjin. Even with this loss to the Scandinavians, North Korea advances to a quarterfinal against defending champion Germany on Saturday in Wuhan.

After this decisive win the United States will clash with England, who finished second in group A, in Tianjin on Saturday for their quarter-final tie. The history is on the Americans side as they have won 6 of the last nine games against England. The last time they met was eight months ago and it finished 1-1.