weekend diversion / world's game, distaff edition

that was a tough match with Costa Rica, wasn’t it?
Even if you did not stay up to get the late soccer result from Vancouver last night, by now you know that the United States Women’s National Team beat Costa Rica 3-0 (that would be “three nil” to people with a certain accent, or affect), assuring themselves a slot in the 12-team tournament at the London Olympics. A loss, and they would have been out of the Olympics.

Here is Grant Wahl’s take from Sports Illustrated (recap: Carli Lloyd is dangerous, US is deep). You get a sense of how well Costa Rica played to have held the US to a single goal for much of the match (let alone, how much of an upset it would have been if two of those hot chances for CR had found the net) in this recap of the prior US match against Mexico, here (recap: beating Mexico 4-0 brought the US goals differential to 31-0 in 3 group matches).

Last night’s game was surprisingly hard to find (or am I just naive?), perhaps fitting for a match that was surprisingly hard to win. Sitting in front of a computer last night I could not find a direct lead on in-game reports on NYTimes.com or even from the Soccer page at SportsIllustrated.com. Best I could find was a comment thread (of people who were watching the game somewhere) on espn.com (thank you @JimCaple, whose story is here!).

You’d think it would be a front page link on any major sports website. You’d be wrong.

Whatever. US plays Canada Sunday night in the qualifying tournament final, with both teams having already secured the spots for the Olympics. Then, on to London for the Summer Olympics, when it will be time to Release the Wambach!

© Sandy Mattingly 2012