A United States girls’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, america clinched a spot within the 2023 Girls’s World Cup.
The 5-0 victory got here within the People’ second recreation on the Concacaf girls’s championship, which is serving as each a regional championship and likewise because the qualifying match for the Girls’s World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics. The USA beat Haiti, 3-0, in its opening recreation on Monday.
Underneath the format of the revamped eight-team regional match, formally branded the Concacaf W Championship, the highest two finishers in every four-team group qualify mechanically for the Girls’s World Cup, the place america is the two-time defending champion.
The USA ensured it could be one of many prime 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 probabilities.
The People’ place within the World Cup was solely ensured a number of hours later, although, when Haiti beat host Mexico within the night time’s second recreation. That outcome assured america 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.
The USA 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 girls’s champion and the People’ largest regional rival, is anticipated to affix that group on Friday, when it performs Panama in its second match within the match. However the largest story of the match could possibly be Haiti: Its 3-0 victory over Mexico means it wants solely a draw towards Jamaica in its last group recreation to earn its first journey to the World Cup.
The subsequent aim for america, in the meantime, will likely be securing a spot within the Paris Olympics. Solely the winner of the Concacaf match will earn a direct place in that match, although there will likely be a lifeline for the runner-up and third-place nations by 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 delivered to 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, probably 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 range of choices has made the workforce a glimpse of the way forward for a championship squad that, for the second, nonetheless consists of veterans like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan. 13 members of Andonovski’s squad are competing of their first World Cup or Olympic qualifying match for the workforce, and eight entered the match 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 a protracted move on the correct, lifted the ball over a defender’s head on the run to chop again after which flicked it along with her proper foot previous the Jamaican goalkeeper.
Her second got here a couple of minutes later, and after the same main ball down the correct, and was completed simply as deftly: with a first-touch flip over the goalkeeper that was confirmed after a short video evaluate.
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 evaluate, which is getting used within the girls’s championship for the primary time this 12 months.
The outcome, 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.
