United States’ Lindsey Horan, proper, celebrates with Sophia Smith, left, and Megan Rapinoe after scoring throughout the Girls’s World Cup soccer match between the USA and Vietnam at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand, Saturday, July 22, 2023. (AP Picture/Abbie Parr) AP
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Sophia Smith has but to discover a stage that’s too huge for her.
In faculty, she led Stanford to a nationwide title. Within the NWSL, she led the Portland Thorns to a championship and have become the youngest participant to win league MVP honors. So it got here as no shock that she made her first World Cup sport her personal as effectively, scoring a pair of first-half objectives and aiding on Lindsey Horan’s second-half rating Friday to steer the U.S. to a 3-0 victory over Vietnam.
For the U.S., the win was extra clumsy than scientific, with the People outshooting Vietnam 28-0, placing seven of these on course, but losing likelihood after likelihood. However they did sufficient to run their unbeaten streak to 18 video games in World Cup play, step one on what the group hopes shall be a journey that ends with an unprecedented third consecutive title.
With Megan Rapinoe, the World Cup MVP 4 years in the past, and Rose Lavelle, voted the third-best participant in France, nursing accidents, the U.S. went with an unconventional beginning lineup, shifting midfielder Julie Ertz to heart again, the place she final performed a significant sport within the 2019 World Cup opener, and giving midfielder Savannah DeMelo her first worldwide begin. Each Rapinoe and Lavelle got here on within the 63rd minute. For Lavelle it was her first motion since early April and she or he was practically rewarded with a objective, however her shot from the fitting wing within the 86th minute hit the crossbar.
Whether or not the U.S. will be capable of proceed using its depth to success is one other query. The People face the Netherlands, the 2019 World Cup runner-up, in group play Wednesday. And the 16-team knockout stage figures to be essentially the most aggressive in historical past.
“That is what is meant to occur,” mentioned Horan, the U.S. captain and the one American who performs for a membership exterior the NWSL, of the advance within the girls’s sport around the globe. “We would like a aggressive World Cup. We would like all of those groups to present us their finest matches. Earlier than we had been identical to, oh, that is going to be 6-0, 7-0 or no matter. That’s not how it's anymore. Groups are as much as this degree. It’s going to be essentially the most aggressive World Cup — it already is — and that’s thrilling. That’s what everybody needs, needs to look at.”
Take into account the U.S., which is ranked No. 1 on this planet. It beat Thailand 13-0 in its match opener 4 years in the past. However Vietnam, taking part in the primary World Cup sport in its historical past, proved a lot harder for everybody however Smith.
Anticipated to be the breakout star of this World Cup, Smith opened the scoring within the 14th minute. The sequence began with Horan sending a ball ahead for Alex Morgan, whose back-heel cross discovered Smith in full dash up the left wing. She outran a pair of defenders, then grounded a left-footed shot by way of the legs of Vietnamese keeper Than Thi Kim Thanh.
Smith doubled the lead within the dying second of first-half stoppage time, left-footing a shot by way of site visitors and once more by way of the keeper’s legs. Morgan helped arrange that rating, too, although minutes earlier she had been pissed off by Thanh, who guessed appropriately and dove in entrance of the American’s penalty shot.
Smith’s second rating was initially negated by an offside name however that was overruled after a video evaluate.
Horan then made in 3-0 it the 77th minute. After Smith drove to the top line, drawing a number of Vietnamese defenders along with her, she despatched a right-footed cross into the middle of the field for a lonely Horan, who had an empty internet to shoot at.
Issues received’t get any simpler in opposition to the Netherlands. The People beat the Dutch within the remaining of the final World Cup in addition to within the quarterfinals of the Tokyo Olympics, on penalty kicks, two years in the past.
Coach Vlatko Andonovski’s mission heading into this match was an advanced one. Not solely has he been saddled with the stress of holding the U.S. on prime, however he’s additionally been requested to remake an getting older group youthful. So the group he dropped at New Zealand features a U.S. document 14 gamers making their first journey to the match, together with Smith and teenager Alyssa Thompson, the second-youngest American to play in a World Cup, who made her debut late within the second half.
Up to now, he appears to have chosen appropriately.