The American girls successfully defended the world championship after defeating the Netherlands with a score of 2-0 in the women’s soccer World Cup final in 2019.
The victory in Lyon (France) continues to affirm America’s position in dominating the world women’s football when it was crowned the fourth time in 8 World Cups, most recently in 2015. However, to protect the successful championship, the American girls took more than 1 hour to be able to penetrate the Dutch defense.
With the dominant position, the defending champion created more opportunities but their attacks were continuously helpless before the excellence of goalkeeper Sari van Veenendaal of the orange shirt team during the first half. It looks like a bad sign when the US team has the goal to open the score before the 12th minute in the previous matches.
However, when the attack of the girls from America seemed to salute to Van Veenendaal’s talent, VAR technology (video arbitration assistant) came to help them relieve the deadlock in the 61st minute. It is a situation that the referee awarded the US an 11m penalty after referring to the VAR that Stefanie Van der Gragt had made a foul in the penalty area with Alex Morgan.
The deadlock of the US was captain Megan Rapinoe released when the successful implementation of the free kick on the 11m mark. This goal also helped the 34-year-old female player become the best scorer in this tournament with 6 goals. After the goal, the Netherlands almost had no strong reaction before being submerged by Rose Lavelle in the hope of reversing the score with a beautiful finish in the 69th minute, fixing a 2-0 victory for the United States.
In addition to the happiness and glory of American girls will promise to bring many interesting things to come. That is the fact that they will take the “champion” in this year’s Women’s World Cup as a springboard for the battle for gender equality in earning income in women’s football in the US in particular and the world in general.
The public will continue to closely monitor whether the girls of Jill Ellis will accept the invitation to the White House of US President Donald Trump or not after conflicts on gender equality. And most importantly, this year’s world championship will be a turning point for American football when the stars of a legendary generation like Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd are at the sunset of their careers.
