It was no walk in the park, but\u00a0the United States claimed an Olympic berth after withstanding a spirited and stubborn Costa Rica\u00a0to\u00a0earn a\u00a03-0 win Friday night at BC Place in Vancouver.<\/p>\n
Tobin Heath put the U.S. on the board with a 16th minute\u00a0goal while Carli Lloyd followed up with an insurance strike in the 74th minute. Second-half sub\u00a0Alex Morgan\u00a0added a third in the 89th minute.\u00a0Goalkeeper\u00a0Hope Solo blanked the opposition for the fourth\u00a0straight match to help send the\u00a0defending gold medalists\u00a0to the London games\u00a0this summer.<\/p>\n
The Costa Ricans came out ready to shock their top-ranked opponent. With fierce challenges and an ambitious attack, Solo was called upon to make a few tough saves in the first frame.<\/p>\n
Although the Americans were far from the world-beating bunch that outscored their opponents 31-0 in their last three, Pia Sunhage’s squad was slow to find their attacking fire until the 16th minute. Shannon Boxx played a ball across to Heath, who headed it through\u00a0from the far post.<\/p>\n
Costa Rica nearly responded when\u00a0Karol Sanchez whipped a shot off the bar in the 28th minute. When the Tico weren’t attacking, they were sizing up their opponent with hard challenges and a few errant elbows and backhands, one which caught Lauren Cheney in the face. Even so, the referee decided that the best course of action was to keep her cards tucked.<\/p>\n
Unwilling to play in their opponents’ tactics, the U.S. re-emerged in the second half with better form. As the possession scale fell further their favor, the knockout blow arrived with just over 15 minutes to go. Carli Lloyd collected a missed clearance and unleashed a laser from the edge of the box to double the lead.<\/p>\n
Morgan, who constantly stymied the tired Tico defense after coming on as a sub, upped the total to three when she reclaimed an errant pass off a defender and buried it on the doorstep a minute from regulation.<\/p>\n
The U.S. was an unstoppable force throughout qualifying. Outscoring their opponents 34-0, the Americans sent a clear and present\u00a0message to their competition come London: get out of our way.<\/em><\/p>\n Up next for the Americans\u00a0 is the tournament finale on Sunday,<\/em>\u00a0which will pit the U.S. against the winner of tonight’s Mexico-Canada match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The U.S. women claimed an Olympic berth by beating a stingy Costa Rican squad 3-0 Friday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,44],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Tobin17.png?fit=435%2C271","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8798"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8798"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8805,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8798\/revisions\/8805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}