2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Team USA Watch- On To The Quarterfinals

FIFA world number one ranked Team USA clinched its spot in the quarterfinals for the sixth straight Women's World Cup tournament with a convincing 3-0 victory over first time FIFA Women's World Cup entrants Colombia in its second Group C match in Sinsheim.


It was almost like a home game for Team USA in the sold out Rhein Neckar Arena because is not too far from the US military base in Mannheim where many American military service members are stationed or live in Heidelberg.  

The 25,475 people in attendance were predominately pro-American as a result and Team USA wanted to get the pre-4th of July football party started early in this match for them and they succeeded.  After a few near miss scoring chances,  Heather O'Reilly finally got Team USA on the board at the 12 minute mark with a rocket into the upper left hand corner of the goal for the 1-0 lead.  

They kept putting pressure on the Colombians, but ended up taking that precarious 1-0 lead into halftime. 

Colombia's team is made up predominately of younglings off its U-20 squad which finished 4th in last year's FIFA U-20 World Cup tournament and probably felt good being down by one goal. 

But they were about to find out why Team USA holds that top ranking as they kicked up their level of play another notch and made some substitutions off that deep USA bench to put the match away.   Megan Rapinoe came off the bench to score the second US goal at the 50 minute mark, and seven minutes later Carli Lloyd scored to build the USA lead to 3-0.

The win tied them in Group C play with Sweden, who knocked off North Korea 1-0 in an earlier match played in Dresden   It sets up a showdown match in Wolfsburg on Wednesday for the Group C title.   More importantly Team USA has a +3 goal differential going into that match which puts them at the top of the group for now. .  

Sweden is in the position in which it must win to take the group, and they're bucking history in the fact that Team USA has never lost a group match in Women's World Cup history.   


Should Team USA win or tie against the FIFA number 5 world ranked Swedes, they win Group C and take on the Group D runner up in the quarterfinals.  We'll have a better idea who that might be tomorrow as FIFA number 3 world ranked Brazil and FIFA number 9 world ranked Norway square off in a critical Group D match and the FIFA world number 11 ranked Aussies take on Equatorial Guinea. 

Should be interesting to see what transpires on Wednesday.


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