CHESTER, Pa. – Playing just 30 miles from her hometown, Carli Lloyd had a perfect night at PPL Park on Friday, scoring a pair of goals to lead the US women’s national team to a 3-0 win over Mexico in the semifinals of the CONCACAF Women’s Championship.
But the New Jersey native still wants more.
Even though Friday’s result secured a spot for the Americans in next summer’s World Cup, Lloyd and the rest of her USWNT teammates will now look to claim the CONCACAF crown when they face Costa Rica in the title game Sunday (6 pm ET, Fox Sports 1).
Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago will meet before that in the third-place game with another World Cup spot on the line.
“For me, it’s a final,” Lloyd said. “And in a final, we’re gong to win. We want to win decisively. This was a great win [against Mexico]. We’re headed to Canada. But we still have a statement to make.”
That statement would be continuing to prove just how dominant the USWNT is compared to its CONCACAF peers – although, at this point, no one is going to argue that point very much.
The United States have outscored their opponents by a 15-0 margin during the CONCACAF tourney, and have managed to do so without many contributions from star forward Alex Morgan, who sprained her ankle in a 5-0 win over Guatemala last Friday.
Head coach Jill Ellis decided to test her depth even more when she brought all-time leading scorer Abby Wambach off the bench for Friday’s World Cup-clinching win, explaining that she’s “not just looking at how we start games but looking at games at how we finish them.”
“We’ve started to see a lot more of the things we want to see when we play,” Ellis said. “I think we make strides every game. Certainly we can find things to improve on. But the pictures and the images we’re getting as to how we want to try to play have been very good.”
The USWNT will once again be a big favorite Sunday when they meet a Costa Rican team that qualified for the country’s first-ever Women’s World Cup following a shootout win over CONCACAF darling Trinidad and Tobago in Friday’s other semifinal.
But Ellis expressed some wariness about the matchup, calling Costa Rica “a program that’s really evolved.”
“I’ve caught pieces of their games and I’ve been impressed,” the USWNT head coach said. “I think they’re a team that likes to move the ball around. They’ve got some very good players. And I like how they play.”
Some US players did admit that already qualifying for the World Cup should take some pressure off of Sunday’s final – especially after they stumbled in the 2010 semifinals vs. Mexico.
But before they look ahead to trying to win their first World Cup since 1999, they’ll first look to win their fifth CONCACAF Women’s Championship.
“It’s a big relief,” Llloyd said of qualifying. “I can kind of breathe now. I think obviously four years ago we went through a little bit of rocky qualifying, so we didn’t want that to happen this time. So it just feels really good to have this one over.
“But we’ve got one more and we want to win that one too, so we’ve got to refocus our attention to Sunday’s game.”
