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Captain Christie Rampone and her teammates led the U.S. to a decisive 1-0 win over North Korea on Tuesday. (Photo: Angie Isac\/Sportpix.org.uk)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

The U.S. Women\u2019s National team defeated North Korea 1-0 on Tuesday at Old Trafford, clinching first place in Group G with the nine maximum points.<\/p>\n

U.S. striker Abby Wambach scored for the third straight game with\u00a025th minute tally,\u00a0courtesy of a play\u00a0created by Lauren Cheney and Alex Morgan.<\/p>\n

Though the U.S. managed to take down the eighth-ranked North Koreans and confirm a berth in the knockout round, concerns over the team’s\u00a0poor finishing linger.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Colombia held the U.S. to just one goal until late in the match, when the game finally opened up and the Americans scored their second and third goals.<\/p>\n

But on Tuesday, the U.S. had no such luck getting any more than one shot to go into the net. Wambach finished a delicately placed feed from Morgan, who received the ball off a long pass from Cheney.<\/p>\n

Hope Solo, whose verbal joust with analyst and former U.S. national team player Brandi Chastain have put her back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, made two big saves to preserve her second consecutive shutout.<\/p>\n

Any hopes North Korea harbored\u00a0for a\u00a0rally effectively ended in the 81^{st<\/sup> minute when Choe Mi Gyong was sent off for a tackle on Cheney, forcing her team to find an equalizer a player down.<\/p>\n}

Meanwhile, Cheney\u2019s assist on Wambach\u2019s goal shows that she is still getting involved offensively. It seems that collectively, the U.S. need to regroup to find their scoring touch.<\/p>\n

And they’ll have to do it before Friday’s quarterfinal contest at Newcastle against New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abby Wambach scored for the third straight game in a 1-0 win for the U.S. over North Korea on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14316,"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":[130,44],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Christie3.png?fit=469%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14309"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14329,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14309\/revisions\/14329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}