The CONCACAF Women’s World Cup Qualifying tournament kicked off in Cancun, Mexico with Group B play as Guatemala took on Costa Rica, and the USA took on Haiti. As expected, Costa Rica defeated Guatemala by a score of 1-0, and the USA defeated Haiti 5-0.

The first goal of the USA game came in the 9th minute off a free kick taken by Carli Lloyd. Haiti’s goalkeeper made a great initial save, but Rachel Buehler pounced on it to score her first goal for the USA. In the 15th minute, Yael Averbuch place a corner kick right to Shannon Boxx who headed it on target, but Abby Wambach got a little flick on the ball to make sure it went in. In the 40th minute, after Wambach placed the ball in front of the goal, Amy Rodriguez, who had been struggling the whole first half, tapped the ball in at the goal line. After some good footwork, Carli Lloyd was able to play a ball to the back post for Wambach who scored off her stomach to make it 4-0 in stoppage time to finish the half. The last goal came in the 62nd minute when Kristine Lilly, a halftime substitute, passed a perfect cross to Wambach who headed the ball down an into the goal for her third goal of the night.

Although the USA won their first game, and are in first place on goal differential, the game wasn’t the best they have ever played. Even against Haiti. There were times when players on the US would kick a bad cross way over the target, or miss wide open shots that went wide of the goal. Haiti created a few attacks, but when they did they had some US defenders running on circles. They played with everything they had. It is worrying to see that a team like Haiti who can barely even have the chance to train in a good environment, can make a team like the USA look bad at times. This is not to say that the USA players didn’t play with heart, but when they make a bad pass under no pressure, you start to wonder if this is really a team that deserves to be a favorite to win the World Cup next year against teams like Germany, Brazil, and Sweden.

The attack lacked anything that would make you think of an attack. It was slow, lazy, predictable, and they wasted more than half their chances. It is hard to play against teams like this, who have little support, but there is no reason why the team should play like they played on Thursday night.

Most players made unnecessary mistakes often, missed good chances, played bad passes, and so on. The best player of the night? Kristine Lilly. That’s right, the 39 year old, who only played the second half was the most consistent player with good movement off and off the ball.

Let’s hope the USA picks its game up for the Guatemala match on Saturday at 5;30 pm PT, which should be a little tougher before the match against Costa Rica on Monday at 6:30 pm PT. All games can be watched live on concacaf.com.

~Alondra Hernandez

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