A United States ladies’s nationwide workforce that arrived in Mexico this week with two aims has already achieved the primary: After a lopsided victory over Jamaica on Thursday night time, the USA clinched a spot within the 2023 Ladies’s World Cup.
The 5-0 victory got here within the People’ second recreation on the Concacaf ladies’s championship, which is serving as each a regional championship and in addition because the qualifying event for the Ladies’s World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics. America beat Haiti, 3-0, in its opening recreation on Monday.
Below the format of the revamped eight-team regional event, formally branded the Concacaf W Championship, the highest two finishers in every four-team group qualify mechanically for the Ladies’s World Cup, the place the USA is the two-time defending champion.
America ensured it might be one of many high finishers with a dominant efficiency towards Jamaica: Sophia Smith scored twice within the first eight minutes, and Rose Lavelle, Kristie Mewis and Trinity Rodman added objectives within the second half because the outclassed Jamaicans pale underneath an onslaught of U.S. depth and scoring possibilities.
The People’ place within the World Cup was solely ensured a couple of hours later, although, when Haiti beat host Mexico within the night time’s second recreation. That end result assured the USA a top-two end in its first-round group, and a spot within the expanded 32-team World Cup in Australia and New Zealand subsequent summer season.
America is the twelfth nation to qualify, becoming a member of the co-hosts, together with South Korea, Japan, China, the Philippines and Vietnam from Asia; and Sweden, France, Denmark and Spain from Europe.
Canada, the defending Olympic ladies’s champion and the People’ greatest regional rival, is anticipated to affix that group on Friday, when it performs Panama in its second match within the event. However the greatest story of the event could possibly be Haiti: Its 3-0 victory over Mexico means it wants solely a draw towards Jamaica in its closing group recreation to earn its first journey to the World Cup.
The subsequent aim for the USA, in the meantime, might be securing a spot within the Paris Olympics. Solely the winner of the Concacaf event will earn a direct place in that event, although there might be a lifeline for the runner-up and third-place nations by way of a Concacaf Olympic playoff in September 2023.
U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski is managing a workforce in transition as he navigates the trail to each tournaments. The squad he dropped at Mexico is a mix of World Cup veterans like Lavelle, Lindsey Horan and Becky Sauerbrunn and new faces like Smith, whose two objectives gave her seven this 12 months, essentially the most for a U.S. participant; defender Naomi Girma, who assisted on Smith’s first aim in solely her third recreation for the U.S.; and Rodman, the daughter of the previous N.B.A. star Dennis Rodman.
That variety of choices has made the workforce a glimpse of the way forward for a championship squad that, for the second, nonetheless contains veterans like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan. 13 members of Andonovski’s squad are competing of their first World Cup or Olympic qualifying event for the workforce, and eight entered the event with fewer than 10 worldwide appearances.
Smith confirmed a touch of the promise at his disposal within the opening minutes. On her first aim, she took an extended move on the best, lifted the ball over a defender’s head on the run to chop again after which flicked it together with her proper foot previous the Jamaican goalkeeper.
Her second got here a couple of minutes later, and after an analogous main ball down the best, and was completed simply as deftly: with a first-touch flip over the goalkeeper that was confirmed after a short video overview.
Two extra objectives within the first half — by Ashley Hatch within the eleventh minute and Mallory Pugh within the twenty seventh — had been erased by video overview, which is getting used within the ladies’s championship for the primary time this 12 months.
The end result, although, was by no means doubtful. An unmarked Lavelle scored on the again publish within the 59th minute to make it 3-0; Kristie Mewis transformed a penalty after Midge Purce was shocked within the space within the 82nd minute; and Rodman turned in a cross from Pugh 4 minutes later for her second worldwide aim.
Supply: NY Times