Women’s defense of World Cup nears
Exactly one month before the U.S. women’s national team begins its World Cup journey — a road it hopes will lead back to global supremacy — the team took the field at Avaya Stadium.
On Tuesday night, the U.S. women easily beat Chile for the second time in a week, 4-0. Next month the Americans will start the qualifying process for the 2019 Women’s World Cup, to be held next summer in France. The U.S. women hope to successfully defend their 2015 World Cup championship in July.
The depth and dominance of the team that was on display against Chile would lead an observer to believe that the top-ranked team in the world should have no concerns heading into the World Cup year. The goals came from the usual suspects: Carli Lloyd with two and Tobin Heath with a goal and an assist on Mallory Pugh’s goal, which was the first of the game.
“We’ve got high-quality players,” said coach Jill Ellis, who
professed her love for Avaya Stadium, where the team improved its record to 4-0. The U.S. women have never lost in California.
But as we’ve learned the hard way, nothing in American soccer can be taken for granted.
We learned that by watching the U.S. men be embarrassingly eliminated from the World Cup last fall in a loss at tiny Trinidad and Tobago.
And we learned it at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where for the first time the American women were eliminated before the medal round.
No, the concern — some may call it a crisis — in U.S. Soccer isn’t just on the men’s side, though the worry is certainly more pronounced there. The combination of the Olympic disappointment and the poor American showing at the U-20 Women’s World Cup this summer, where the U.S. team was eliminated in the first round by Spain, has created real concern that the rest of the world is catching up to the American women.
Chile is an example of the rise of unexpected teams. The squad has qualified for its first World Cup, finishing a surprising second behind Brazil in the final qualifying stage in South America. Chile’s style was good preparation for the teams the United States will face in CONCACAF qualifying.
“I think Chile was a good opponent for us,” Lloyd said. “I think we can go into qualifying confident and ready.”
“They give us a very technical style of play,” Ellis said.
Ellis has done a good job in the past two years, since that Olympic loss, of bringing in new players and transitioning to the next generation. The team is full of new stars like Pugh and Rose Lavelle and fresh faces like Tierna Davidson, the Stanford junior from Menlo Park who will turn 20 in two weeks. She’s juggling national team duty with school and playing for the Cardinal.
The U.S. team still has plenty of familiar faces and veteran influence. Cal alumnus Alex Morgan was the captain Tuesday night. When 20-year-old Pugh came off to start the second half, Lloyd, 36, came on and within 40 seconds had buried a goal. She added a second in the 93rd minute with what Ellis termed a “world-class finish.”
Some familiar faces weren’t playing. Redding’s Megan Rapinoe, recovering from a rib injury, wasn’t in uniform but was on hand helping to raise money for victims of the Carr Fire. She was also trying to pay attention to the WNBA playoffs, where her girlfriend, Sue Bird, led Seattle into the championship series.
The Americans should be healthy in a month for CONCACAF qualifying. They are in Group A and will open against Mexico on Oct. 4, follow with Panama on Oct. 7 and then Trinidad and Tobago on Oct. 10. Group A play will take place in Cary, N.C. Rival Canada is in Group B, along with Jamaica, Costa Rica and Cuba.
The top two teams from each group will head to the semifinals. The semifinals, third-place and championship games will be held in Frisco, Texas, the week of Oct. 14. The winners of each semifinal will automatically qualify for France, as will the third-place team. The fourthplace team will face a twogame play-in against Argentina.
Though it seems unlikely that the U.S. team would struggle in qualifying, stranger things have happened. And not just to the men. In qualifying for the 2011 Women’s World Cup in Germany, the U.S. was on the verge of being eliminated and forced into a play-in against Italy.
If this team has a vulnerability, it is likely to be in goal. Alyssa Naeher has assumed the starting position, though Ashlyn Harris started Tuesday. But no one has been truly tested in major competition. The American women haven’t gone into a key international competition — Olympics or World Cup — without Hope Solo as the starting goalkeeper since the 2004 Olympics. (Solo started the 2007 World Cup but was infamously benched in a knockout game, which the Americans lost.)
We expect the women to succeed. But in soccer, nothing can be taken for granted. The road to France begins soon.