‘I don’t know, man.’ U.S. barely advances in World Cup after scoreless draw with Portugal
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — The most alarming thing about the national soccer team’s performance Tuesday didn’t come on the field, where the U.S. stumbled through a lifeless, listless and passionless draw with Portugal.
It wasn’t in the group table, which showed the Americans finishing second for just the second time in nine women’s World Cups, nor in the record, which showed the U.S. winning just once in three games and collecting five points, its worst-ever World Cup performance.
All of that was concerning. But what was alarming happened afterward, when many of the players declared their mission accomplished because they had squeezed into Sunday’s knockout round by the slimmest of margins.
A performance that would have been embarrassing to previous editions of the national team was being celebrated by this one.
“We’re moving on to the next round. We’re moving on to the round of 16,” Alex Morgan said.
“We got through to the next round,” Lynn Williams added. “I wish we would have won. But at the end of the day, that doesn’t really matter. It’s just getting through to the knockout stages.”
That, of course, is true. The unbeaten U.S. (1-0-2) came within the width of a goalpost of being eliminated when Portugal’s Ana Capeta hit the right post with a stoppage-time shot that would have sent Portugal, a World Cup debutante, on and sent the U.S, a four-time champion, home. But the Americans lived to see another day.
They may be on life support, suffering from wounds terminal and self-inflicted, but they’re still alive.
“I’m not concerned at all,” Lindsey Horan said.
A bit of context here: Horan is the team captain.
The top-ranked U.S. came into Tuesday’s game leading the group on goal differential over the Netherlands. If it beat No. 21 Portugal and protected its two-score edge in the differential, it would win the group.
The Dutch served notice early in the evening that wasn’t going to happen, scoring four times in the first 23 minutes of its 7-0 rout of Vietnam.
No worries. A draw against a Portuguese team that the U.S. had beaten 10 times in 10 tries, outscoring them 39-0, would suffice. That almost didn’t happen either, with Portugal outpossessing and outpassing the sloppy Americans and nearly grabbing what would have been a well-earned win on Capeta’s shot.
Portuguese coach Francisco Neto thought it obvious that his team deserved to win. For his part U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski continued to ignore the obvious, parroting the same lines he’s used since arriving in New Zealand.
“I’m not worried about it. I don’t think anyone on the staff is worried,” he said after last month’s sloppy opener, which ended in a win over Vietnam.
“We’re just going to get better from game to game,” he promised after the second game, a draw with the Netherlands.
Ashley Sanchez didn’t get into the Americans’ first game or their 1-1 tie against the Netherlands, but she was in the minds and hearts of watchful Monrovia supporters.
That promise didn’t pan out since the U.S. regressed considerably against Portugal. Yet Andonovski stuck with his “what, me worry?” routine.
“It does not concern me at all, actually. I’m very confident with the group that we have,” he repeated Tuesday.
“It’s not like we don’t have the pieces.”
One piece that will be missing Sunday is midfielder Rose Lavelle, who played her first full game since April but was ineffective and drew her second yellow card in as many matches, meaning she’ll be suspended for the round of 16. It’s also a group that looks as if it should be playing with name tags, so unfamiliar do the players seem with one another.
But it’s the team Andonovski brought to New Zealand, one that includes a U.S.-record 14 World Cup rookies and three starters who came here with fewer than 20 international caps.
Andonovski hasn’t just ignored metaphorical alarms bells, though. After a pro-U.S. crowd of 42,958 booed the team off the field at the end of the first half, real alarm bells started blaring seconds into the second half when a fire alarm went off, accompanied by verbal instructions to leave the stadium immediately.
Nobody went anywhere, but the warning, which continued for an annoying four minutes, seemed appropriate. Before Tuesday, the only time the U.S. has finished anywhere but first in their group was 2011. The Americans rallied to make the tournament final that year before losing to Japan, still the only team to win a World Cup without winning its group.
One person who did seem visibly concerned about the U.S. performance was defender Kelley O’Hara, a four-time World Cup player and two-time champion. She gathered the team in a huddle after Tuesday’s draw and delivered what appeared to be a passionate message. Asked about that afterward, however, she stuck to the company line: Everything’s fine.
“I just told them, ‘Listen guys, we did what we had to do. This game’s done. We advanced. That’s the name of the game: Get out of your group and then go from there,’ ” she said. “This is in the rearview and the only thing that we’re looking at and focused on is the round of 16.”
She did offer a candid answer when asked whether the U.S. can win the next one if it doesn’t play better than it did in the last one.
“I don’t know, man,” she said.
Later this week the team will check out of its 17-story hotel overlooking Auckland’s scenic harbor and head for Melbourne, not Sydney, where they are almost certain to play Sweden, not Italy or Argentina. The Swedes, ranked third in the world, beat the Americans in the Tokyo Olympics and have lost to them in the World Cup and Olympics just once in five tries since 2007.
“We always play Sweden,” Morgan said. “In every major tournament.”
If the U.S. wins, it comes back to Auckland. If it loses, it goes home. And no one has more riding on that return trip than Andonovski, who would become the first women’s national team coach to fail to reach the World Cup semifinals if the U.S. loses.
“We want to make it all the way to the final. That includes coming back to New Zealand,” he said. “We’ve got to take it one step at a time.”
Their last step was a stumble. In the knockout rounds, they can’t afford another.
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