For the U.S. women’s national team, ensuring that it has the chance to go for a Women’s World Cup three-peat didn’t prove to be all that difficult.
Two games into the Concacaf W Championship, the tournament that doubles as 2023 World Cup and 2024 Olympic qualifying, the U.S. has punched its ticket to Australia and New Zealand next summer by securing a top-two group finish. The eight-team W Championship field was split into two groups of four, with the top two in each group claiming the region’s four places at the first 32-team Women’s World Cup next summer. The winner of the competition will secure an automatic berth in the 2024 Olympics, while the second- and third-place finishers will play for the region’s other spot in Paris.
But the first order of business was taking care of a return to the World Cup stage, and that has come with relative ease. The U.S. didn’t blow out Haiti—ranked 60th by FIFA and the second-lowest-ranked team in the W Championship—in its opener in Mexico, but two first-half Alex Morgan goals and an insurance strike from Midge Purce gave the top-ranked U.S. a rather comfortable 3–0 win on Monday.
