Following the United States' 1-0 loss to Italy on Tuesday, U.S. Soccer released its shortlist of men’s and women’s players in the running for the federation’s annual U.S. Soccer Player Of The Year award.
As much as the UEFA Nations League wants you to believe these matches matter and they’re not just meaningless friendlies, is still a bit hard to get exciting about some of the European international matches this weekend with no major tournament on the horizon.
The USWNT U-17 Women's World Cup campaign took a bad turn on Saturday. Featured on FS2 — one of the few soccer matches on TV in the U.S. on a day dominated by college football — the Americans were routed by North Korea 3-0 in their second Group C match in Uruguay.
The U.S. opened the tournament with a 3-0 win while North Korea lost 4-1. Perhaps the Americans assumed they’d have an easy win based on those scores, but that was anything but the case.
Just like Switzerland many time zones away, Panama had a steep hill to climb going into its game against Argentina at home on Tuesday night. Panama dropped a 4-0 decision to Argentina in the first game of the two-legged playoff. Much of the drama in that fixture took place in stoppage time as Argentina scored two goals and Panama saw two players sent off.
It was always going to be an uphill battle for the Swiss heading into Tuesday's second game of the two-leg playoff to decide which UEFA team would lock up the region’s last spot in the 2019 Women’s World Cup. Switzerland found itself in quite a significant hole after a 3-0 away loss on Thursday and needed to be firing on all cylinders (an off day from its opponent wouldn’t hurt either) to keep its hopes alive.
The Scotland women’s national team gave the U.S. all it could handle on Tuesday at St Mirren Park, and although there was warm applause for Alex Morgan and an audible intake of breath amongst the 3,790 in attendance during the USWNT’s best passages of play, the Scots will have left their home supporters looking forward to next summer’s World Cup with keen anticipation.
The U.S. just finished one helluva 2018. But it’s all about getting ready for 2019.
The USWNT concluded an unbeaten year with a 1-0 victory over Scotland on Tuesday in Paisley, Scotland. And a familiar face was responsible for the goal yet again for the No. 1-ranked team in the world.
Alex Morgan scored for the 18th time in 2018 to propel the U.S. to a 10th straight win and increase the USWNT’s unbeaten streak to 28 (25 of which were wins). The U.S. went 18-0-2 in 2018, with draws against Australia and France the lone blemishes.