SheBelieves Cup: Tournament preview
Starting on March 5th, the annual Shebelieves cup will be held in three American cities. The hosts, the USWNT, and the defending champions, England, will compete with returning team Japan and first-time competitor Spain. This will be the 5th edition of the tournament. It will last six days and six games. It is expected to be even bigger than the previous one which had an overall attendance of 77,809 people.
The cup is played in a round-robin format, meaning that they follow the formula of three points for a win, one for a draw, and none for a loss. In the end, the team with the most points is named champion. In case a tie happens, goal differences, goals scored, or head-to-heads result in FIFA ranking being used as tiebreakers, but it is very unlikely that anything other than goal difference will be used
What can we expect from each team? Well, the United States, England, Japan, and Spain are respectively placed as 1st, 6th, 10th and 13th on the FIFA Ranking. That being said, we can look forward to interesting and competitive matches to bring our excitement up for the Olympics, though unfortunately, Spain has not qualified. After the World Cup round of 16 games between Spain and the United States, there were a lot of doubts in if the American victory was fair - they won after scoring two penalty kicks. The March 8th game will certainly be a second chance for both teams to show why they deserve to win.
Not only did the USWNT eliminate Spain, but they also knocked the Lionesses out in the semifinals in one of the most exciting games of the World Cup. The match counted with a Christen Press header, Alex Morgan’s goal and iconic tea celebration, Ellen White’s goal, a penalty kick save by Alyssa Naeher and a red card for Millie Bright. On the opening day, the two teams will meet again and will likely bring another match full of emotions!
Looking back on the previous US games, everyone remembers the rivalry between them and Japan’s team. Starting in 2011, Japan beat the Americans to become World champions. In 2012 and 2015, the United States defeated Japan in both the Olympic and World Cup finals. Unfortunately for Japan, they have not been in their best form, being eliminated in the 16th round last year. This could be a relatively easy game for the US, but as it’s been proved before, everything can happen in a football game.
Since Vlatko Andonovski replaced Jill Ellis as head coach, the USWNT has won two friendlies and the Concacaf Olympic Qualifiers, but they have not faced very tough opponents, except Sweden and Canada. The Shebelieves Cup will be a chance for Andonovski to play against high-class teams and show his game quality.
All the matches are expected to be fairly matched and competitive, making the tournament more interesting to watch. The rights to broadcast were bought by ESPN in the US territory and internationally.
Along with the Shebelieves cup, there will be two other international tournaments happening in March: the Algarve Cup and the Tournoi de France. Don’t forget to check those two out!
Here are the game dates for the Shebelieves cup, make sure to save them in your calendar:
Spain vs Japan: March 5th, 4:15pm ET
USA vs England: March 5th, 7pm ET
Japan vs England: March 8th, 4:15pm ET
USA vs Spain: March 8th, 5pm ET
England vs Spain: March 11th, 4pm CT
USA vs Japan: March 11th, 7pm CT
Writer: Isabella @ holypugh on Twitter
Editor: Alex @ aaroth12 on Twitter
