The job for america girls’s soccer group on Tuesday is evident, as a result of that job by no means modifications. America should get previous Portugal to advance on the Girls’s World Cup as a result of that it what is required, what is predicted, what’s required.
“We really feel like we now have to win all the pieces on a regular basis,” U.S. midfielder Megan Rapinoe mentioned this week. “That’s the expectation for ourselves. That’s the expectation taking part in for the U.S. girls’s nationwide group. It’s simply type of, why are you coming to the World Cup when you don’t assume you must win it? And when you don’t assume you possibly can win it?”
They don’t technically have to win, in fact. A tie might be sufficient to get the People by way of to the spherical of 16, and even a loss might do it within the unlikely occasion that the Netherlands loses to Vietnam on the identical time. However america girls’s group doesn’t go on the lookout for ties, or facet doorways. Its ethos is to win, and to make reminiscences.
Each World Cup has its moments. Predictable moments and painful moments. Shocking moments and iconic moments. Rapinoe, who’s at her fourth World Cup, has seen all of them. She has created quite a lot of of them. However Rapinoe additionally acknowledges, maybe higher than anybody at this yr’s event, when one has arrived.
And Tuesday, a recreation when america can win its group and discover its footing over 90 minutes or stumble and maybe — unlikely, sure, however potential — even exit the World Cup, is a type of moments. Rapinoe, whether or not she performs within the recreation or not, is embracing it. She is, actually, welcoming it.
“It’s a strain second,” she mentioned. “And that’s what the event is now. Each single recreation from right here on out is a strain second. And that’s one of the best a part of being on the World Cup.”
“We go into these moments like: ‘Hell yeah,’” she added. “That is precisely the place we wish to be.’
It won’t, nonetheless, be the type of stroll U.S. followers have come to anticipate within the group stage. America is a group in transition, a mixture of veteran World Cup champions and fresh-faced World Cup rookies that has struggled each to dominate weaker groups and to unlock stronger ones.
It a group that has not discovered it straightforward to attain targets, both: The People haven’t rating greater than three targets in a recreation since January, and haven’t scored six in a match since 2021. However they could want a bunch on Tuesday, when the Netherlands will attempt to bury Vietnam on the scoreboard to catch america on purpose distinction, the potential tiebreaker within the group standings if each groups win. (The U.S. and the Netherlands can also every advance with a draw.)
Portugal might be prepared to forestall that: It held the Netherlands to a single purpose final week and annoyed England, the European champion, in a scoreless tie in early July. It can, its coach mentioned this week, be able to put up a struggle.
However what Portugal needs to do, what the Netherlands needs to do, was not the first concern this week for Rapinoe, or her teammates, or her coach, Vlatko Andonovski. America is aware of it has arrived at a particular second on this World Cup. All it has to do now, the gamers mentioned, is seize it.
“We’ve got a job to do, and that’s initially, maintain our recreation,” Andonovski mentioned.
“We don’t wish to look two, three 4 steps ahead,” he added. “This is step one. Let’s make certain we get within the subsequent stage. As a result of if we begin considering too far forward, our probability might by no means come.”