by JJ Duke
After a hard 90-minute battle on the St. James’ Park pitch in Newcastle, the U.S. National Team defeated New Zealand by a score of 2-0. Behind goals from Abby Wambach and Sydney Leroux, the U.S. continues their dominant form in this 2012 Olympics Tournament. Through four games, they have not surrendered a goal in 346 minutes, now the longest streak in Olympics history and will move onto the semifinals back in Manchester to face Canada.
Entering the match, Head Coach Pia Sundhage made one switch bringing Tobin Heath in for Heather O’Reilly on the wing, which confused a lot of people, seeing that O’Reilly has played so well in the previous two matches. And not that Heath has done poorly at all, just figuring with needing to have good speed down the wings against the Football Ferns, O’Reilly would have thought to have gotten the nod for the start. On the other side, Tony Readings brought back in Hannah Wilkinson and Kirsty Yallop for youngsters Rosie White and Annalie Longo, both who were impressive in the previous match against Cameroon. But with Wilkinson forced to miss that match due to yellow card accumulations, you had to figure she was going to start against the U.S. regardless, especially with scoring against them back in Frisco, TX when the Football Ferns suffered a close 2-1 defeat against the U.S. in February.
The early action started out well for New Zealand but the questionable back-line for the Football Ferns was exposed quite quickly. There were multiple miscommunications between the center-back pairing of Abby Erceg and Rebecca Smith and goalkeeper Jenny Bindon throughout the match, but with a bit of luck and some good goalkeeping, they kept the U.S. off the board through the first portion of the first half. After New Zealand’s Katie Hoyle came close to challenging Hope Solo’s goal, the U.S. struck first in the 27th minute as Alex Morgan held up a couple defenders and hit a low shot-cross to the back post, as Abby Wambach slid in and buried home her fourth goal of the tournament, which put her level with Canada’s Melissa Tancredi for the scoring lead. Then, another common theme of the U.S. during this tournament came with an elaborate goal scoring celebration. The team started turning cartwheels in the corner in paying tribute to the USA’s Gabby Douglas winning the gymnastics All-Around title the day before, which the players tweeted the night before giving her the team’s backing as they watched in their hotel.
After that, it seemed that the U.S. had control of the match while New Zealand would threaten once or twice, but never really gained control of the match, as the U.S. kept hitting long balls over the top and down the flanks to great effect.
The second half provided a more physical encounter as both teams scratched for a difference-making goal. Also a key factor was the refereeing from the South American crew, as Jesica di Iorio let a lot of the play unfold including a couple non-penalty calls. And when Morgan came charging down the pitch on a 1v1, Bindon came sliding out and was met by Morgan’s knee as the attacker tried jumping over Bindon to avoid her. The contact brought Morgan down as well as knocked out Bindon but the referee blew for a drop-ball instead of a foul. On the other side, after replacing Wilkinson in the 77th minute, who played reasonably well for the Football Ferns on her return to the starting XI, Rosie White was dragged down in the box in the last 10 minutes but to no call by di Iorio as well. Despite the non-foul calls, she did keep things fairly consistent by trying to let play flow to the best of her ability and if you’re not calling anything, don’t call anything late and that’s what she did so I applaud her for that.
Possibly feeling a little woozy from the earlier collision from Bindon, Sundhage replaced Morgan for Sydney Leroux nine minutes from time, and just three minutes she ran down a long ball played on the left flank, beat Smith easily and slotted the ball home through Bindon’s legs giving the U.S. their 2-0 lead, a lead they would not look back from as the USA moved onto the semifinals.
Overall, it was a workmanlike performance from the U.S., who looked dangerous throughout the match but with some poor finishing from Morgan, who will hope that she recovers from a possible knee-knock for the semifinals on Monday, as well as some sloppy play through the midfield the score could have been much higher. But also you have to tip your hat to the New Zealand side, which did not come to play in this tournament for just playing sakes. They came out and fought for three group matches, got the result they needed and could have provided another solid result or two as well. And the great thing for Readings side, outside of Bindon who is 39 years of age, the team is relatively quite young and even a couple of players will feature in the U-20 WWC in a couple of weeks. So expect more great things to come from this side in the future with their rapid development.