Preview: USA Women vs. Vietnam Women
The reigning champions USA Women will begin the defence of their World Cup trophy on Saturday when they go up against Vietnam Women in Auckland.
While the USA are looking to retain the silverware, Vietnam are aiming to give a good account of themselves as they make their first appearance at a men’s or women’s World Cup.
The USA are hoping to continue their impressive record at the World Cup, having lifted the trophy on four occasions, including the last two tournaments in Canada and France.
Impressively, they have reached the semi-final stage at all previous eight editions of the World Cup, and they will be expecting to go deep into the competition once again.
The Stars and Stripes will be looking to get their campaign up and running with a win, before they turn their attention to their remaining two group games against the Netherlands and Portugal.
After beating Wales 2-0 in their final warm-up game thanks to a Trinity Rodman brace, the USA head into the World Cup off the back of nine consecutive victories.
Having won their last three World Cup openers, the defending champions will be confident of getting off to a winning start against a Vietnam side who are making their tournament debut.
Vietnam, meanwhile, are preparing to make their first World Cup appearance after securing qualification via a playoff round at the 2022 Asia Cup.
With the competition serving as a World Cup qualifying tournament for the Asian Football Confederation, Vietnam knew that a place in the semi-finals would be enough to book their ticket to Australia and New Zealand.
However, after losing in the last four to China, they were forced to compete in a single round-robin playoff featuring the losing quarter-finalists apart from Australia, who qualified automatically as the co-hosts.
The Golden Star Women Warriors went on to beat Chinese Taipei and Thailand to secure their place at the World Cup, where they will be hoping to spring a surprise or two.
After shipping nine goals without reply in their final warm-up game against Spain, Vietnam will be hoping to produce a far more resolute performance against the USA.
USA Women form (all competitions):
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Vietnam Women form (all competitions):
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We say: USA Women 6-0 Vietnam Women
USA head into the tournament opener as the overwhelming favourites, and we expect them to live up to that tag by easing to a comfortable victory over Vietnam, whose confidence would have been dented by the heavy defeat to Spain last week.