AP Photo/Andre Penner
The victory puts the USA into its eighth consecutive Algarve Cup final where it will face Germany, winners of Group A after a dominating 5-0 victory against China today. The championship game kicks off at 4 p.m. local time (10 a.m. CT) and fans can follow live on ussoccer.com’s MatchTracker. The game matches the top two women’s soccer nations in the world according to the most recent FIFA rankings and is a rematch of the 2005 and 2006 Algarve Cup championship games, the former won by the USA 1-0 and the latter by Germany in penalty kicks.
U.S. head coach Pia Sundhage had shifted her lineup a bit, starting Averbuch in place of Carli Lloyd and Rodriguez up top in place of Cheney, but both Lloyd and Cheney came on at halftime, along with Casey Nogueira for Heather O’Reilly as the USA switched to a 4-3-3 formation. With Shannon Boxx sitting deep with Lloyd and Lori Lindsey in front of her, Cheney patrolling the left wing and Nogueira on the right, the USA started to control the match. Sweden was still dangerous to the end on counter-attacks, but it was the USA which found the net twice to win the game.
The USA has made the championship game of the Algarve Cup every year since 2003 and has won the tournament five times during that span. The two losses both came in penalty kicks, to Germany in 2006 and to Sweden in 2009. No other team has made more than three consecutive Algarve Cup finals in the 17 year history of the tournament.
Germany has scored 16 goals in this tournament and allowed zero with its closest margin of victory at four goals. The USA and Germany met last Oct. 29 in Augsburg, Germany, with the USA scraping out a 1-0 victory on an Abby Wambach goal despite being out-shot 17-7.
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