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For more than an hour, the United States sailed shots high and spun them wide. It skied them over the crossbar and curled them wide of each post. Occasionally, Vietnam’s goalkeeper would swat one away.
Three of the shots went in the Vietnam net, however, and at the World Cup, that is all that matters. Sophia Smith, a 22-year-old forward playing in her first World Cup match, got the first two and set up the third for Lindsey Horan, a veteran midfielder entrusted only weeks ago with the captain’s armband.
But there could have been more, and the Americans knew that as well as anyone. Alex Morgan failed to convert a first-half penalty kick. Rose Lavelle hit the crossbar late in the second half. Horan admitted she “could have scored maybe three or four more.”
“A World Cup isn’t always perfect or pretty,” Smith said sagely even though this is her first. “But I think we definitely could put away a few more chances.”
Those chances — the United States had 28 shots overall — were perhaps the best evidence of what might have been on a day that will be remembered more for the goals that were almost scored than the ones that were.
Sharpness, efficiency, ruthlessness: Those are discussions for tomorrow. On a chilly afternoon in Auckland, the main takeaway for the United States was that it had opened this World Cup just as it left the last one: with a victory.
“Obviously we came here to win the game,” United States Coach Vlatko Andonovski said, “and we did that.”
Like the United States, Vietnam surely knew that things might have gone much worse. At a pregame news conference at Eden Park on the eve of the game, a reporter from Vietnam took the microphone, introduced himself and asked about a certain match from the 2019 World Cup.
“What do you expect from the Vietnam team tomorrow?” he asked Andonovski. “Are you going to crush us like against Thailand four years ago?”
It was, in all honesty, a fair question. Every soccer fan, every player, every coach knows what happened in a similar shark-vs.-minnow spot: The United States strolled to a 13-0 victory against an overmatched Thailand team in a game that morphed from respect to awe to backlash over 90 stunningly noncompetitive minutes. The fear was that against Vietnam, a team appearing in its first World Cup, the United States might gin up a rerun.
Andonovski didn’t take the bait before the game. He spoke graciously about respect, and admitted, “They will fight and make it as hard as possible for us.” Vietnam’s coach, Mai Duc Chung, promised a battle, saying his team had come for a fight, “not just for jogging.”
But while Andonovski could not say it, another 13-0 would have been fine with him. In a group stage when goal difference can matter quite a bit, the more goals, the better.
So as chance after chance went wasted, he decided to try to focus on the positives: a rebuilt defense anchored by Julie Ertz, reinstalled as a center back; strong debut performances by Smith, Trinity Rodman, Andi Sullivan and Savannah DeMelo; late minutes for Rose Lavelle and Megan Rapinoe that confirmed their injuries may be behind them. The chances, Andonovski suggested, made him confident that the goals would come eventually.
“I wouldn’t say that I expected more goals,” he said. “But with the way we played and the opportunities we created, I sure wanted to see more goals. And I thought we deserved to score more goals.”
Maybe those goals are coming. Maybe they will arrive in games against the Netherlands and Portugal, the Americans’ next two opponents in Group E. Maybe Smith, already looking like a candidate to be the tournament’s breakout star, will be even sharper next time out.
And maybe the United States will look back on a win that could have been bigger and be happy that, for one day, it was just big enough.
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