The United States women’s soccer team, which He came from winning the last two World Cups and had never been eliminated in a round of 16 match, fell on penalties (5×4) against Sweden and said goodbye to the universal event based in Australia and New Zealand.
If you take a look at the statistics of the game, it is easy to see that the Americans exercised a net dominance. They finished 22 times against nine of their rivals and overwhelmingly led them in shots between the three sticks (11-1), with higher percentages in possession (58%-42%) and accuracy in passes (77%-69%). But they were never able to break the equality in the score, largely due to the performance of Chelsea goalkeeper Zecira Muzovic.
As the extension was not enough to define it, we had to resort to the penalty lottery, and there the North Americans They enjoyed two occasions to sentence the batch after a couple of opponent failures, but the veteran Megan Rapinoe and the young Sophia Smith missed their respective charges.
At the height of the seventh shot, Kelley O’Hara missed for the Americans and Lina Hurtig was merciless, although her shot should have been checked by the automatic goal detection system.
Four-time world champion and monarch in 2015 and 2019, the northern team had reached this stage sowing uncertainty after consecutive draws against the Netherlands (1-1) and Portugal (0-0). The only victory they achieved was against Vietnam (3-0), and their great attacking star, Alex Morgan leaves the appointment without scoring any target.
Now the Swedes will face Japan in the quarterfinalswhile the other winner of the day, the Netherlands, will fight against Spain.
It is worth clarifying that the Netherlands got their ticket by beating South Africa 2-0.
The early removal of the United States adds to previous surprises such as those led by Germany, Canada and Brazil, who could not overcome the group stage.
