Symmetry would not have been lost on any of them: the United States and Canada, two of the best women’s soccer teams in the world, found themselves on one night suffocating and chasing a prize that only one of them could win.
A tight match. A late penalty. A jubilant celebration.
A year ago, at the Tokyo Olympics, it was the Canadians who cheered, turning a penalty in the second half and winning the match on the way to the gold medal.
On Monday night in Monterrey, Mexico, it was the Americans who danced to the final whistle. They were the ones who had won the penalty and then the match, 1-0, to secure a place at the Paris 2024 Olympics. They were the ones who now had a chance to reclaim that gold medal.
The victory came by familiar hands: Lindsey Horan controlled the midfield. Rose Lavelle slipped behind the defense and won a penalty. Alex Morgan approaches to bury him.
The victory was the second major goal achieved by the Americans in Mexico, in a tournament that served as a classification for both the 2023 World Cup and the 2024 Olympics. The United States had sealed its place in the first just by going to the semifinals. But he still had a goal and a point to prove against Canada in the CONCACAF W Championship final.
Morgan had started that Olympic semifinal last summer in Kashima, Japan, but had seen the end from the bench after being replaced. During the Games, she had been one of the most vocal veteran players in that squad who had no doubt suggested that coach Vlatko Andonovski was doing things wrong.
In the year since that defeat, Morgan, 33, had been one of the veterans who had been asked to give way to younger attacking talents such as Mallory Pugh, Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman, to give space for Andonovsky to tweak and re-equip before next year’s World Cup. Cup in Australia and New Zealand. But he also knew his chance would come again, and on Monday, after two weeks of games with young players and new lineups, Morgan had a chance to do things right, to show he still has a role to play.
“I’m not surprised, but very happy with how he has handled the whole situation in how he came back,” Andonovski told reporters after the final. “I said it early on: Alex is a better player. That’s what makes her special. She doesn’t want to stop growing, she doesn’t want to stop developing.”
His chance to break the deadlock came in the 76th minute. With Horan’s ball after Lavelle was caught in the penalty area, Morgan took a few deep breaths, advanced confidently and buried a low shot and hard in the lower right corner while Canadian goalkeeper Kailen Sheridan threw himself to the other side.
A few minutes after the final whistle, Morgan was honored as the tournament’s standout player.
“She always feels good,” she said, “being called a champion.”
Grateful to be back: Her front-line teammate Megan Rapinoe didn’t come off the bench in the final, Morgan seemed to agree with Andonovsky’s election this time. But he also quickly noticed that the addition of new players, especially to the traditionally rich American team, sometimes requires having older ones to show them the way.
“Some of the younger players can admire the older players in a big tournament like this,” Morgan said. “You can’t replicate that with the friendly. It has to be the real business. And that’s the real business.”
Andonovski also praised players like Morgan, Rapinoe and defender Becky Sauerbrunn for creating an “excellent” environment conducive to success. “We came out in the last game of the tournament, after being in a hotel for a month, with the best energy we’ve ever had,” he said. “That’s a testament, first and foremost, to senior players.”
To what extent are the United States and Canada their regional rivals? Neither team lost a game in Monterrey on the way to the final. Neither of them scored a goal. They each scored a dozen goals in their first four games.
The two teams were so dominant, in fact, that once Costa Rica and Jamaica had blocked the other two semifinal places – getting the other two automatic places in the region at the World Cup – they seemed to withdraw before the final, resting some of their best players in the semifinals and focusing instead on winning the game for third place. The win there seemed a safer bet, after all, and came with a consolation prize: a chance against the U.S.-Canada loser in a two-legged Olympic playoff that offered a last-ditch bid for a place in Paris in 2024.
The defeat in the final was not a catastrophe for Canada: their team is still expected to qualify for the Paris Games by beating Jamaica, who on Monday beat Costa Rica in the third-place match, in the playoffs next year.
Canada also learned a few things about itself along the way. Sheridan, who kept his team in the game with several outstanding stops in the first half, was named the tournament’s best goalkeeper and now seems rooted in that role. Julia Grosso won the Golden Boot as the league’s top scorer, and she and teammate Jordyn Huitema, 21, stepped off the bench on Monday to offer the kind of spark that changes the game that can force the Canada to make the same kind of game. .-old consideration that the United States is embracing now.
“I think there’s another level,” Canadian coach Bev Priestman had said after her team’s semifinal victory, “and I think playing with a team like the United States will get us out of some of our strengths. that maybe the teams didn’t allow us to do. ”
Now she and her players, like the American team, know a little more about the combination they will need to get where they really want to go.