The United States women’s national team didn’t want a repeat of Saturday’s 2-0 loss against Spain on Tuesday night. It took a pretty epic second half to avoid some unwanted d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n
The USWNT erased a 2-0 deficit against the defending World Cup Champions and salvaged a 2-2 draw after a fantastic second half performance.<\/p>\n
Spain took the lead in the first half behind goals from two-time Ballon d’Or F\u00e9minin-winner Alexia Putellas\u00a0and Salma Paralluelo. <\/p>\n
Putellas was a monster in the first half, also finishing with an assist, and easily could have had a second.<\/p>\n
But the United States came roaring back behind goals from Ashley Sanchez and Mallory Swanson.<\/p>\n
Spain finished the match holding 56 percent of possession but it was the Americans who led in overall shots (15-12), shots on goal (6-5) and corners (8-5). The United States were downright dominant at points in the second half.<\/p>\n
Overall, USWNT supporters were happy with the showing:<\/p>\n
The game played out quite differently from what head coach Emma Hayes said she wanted, however, at least in the first half.<\/p>\n
“My big request to the team is to do it earlier,” she told reporters prior to the rematch. “Like, start earlier with the things that really matter.”<\/p>\n
Instead, the game fell into a similar cadence\u2014Spain were far better earlier but the United States slowly seized control of the game. This time, however, a strong second-half showing also resulted in goals.<\/p>\n
“I think we’re much closer to them than we were three years ago, definitely,” Hayes told reporters following Saturday’s rematch.<\/p>\n
Tuesday’s effort should only reinforce that belief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States women’s national team didn’t want a repeat of Saturday’s 2-0 loss against Spain on Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-881740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}