Abby Wambach moved within 17 goals of Tar Heel Mia Hamm’s United States women’s soccer scoring record with a first-half goal that proved to be all the Americans needed in a 1-0 win over a physical North Korean team. It was Wambach’s third goal of the 2012 Olympic Games.
Wambach made her first appearance with the U.S. national team in 2001, two years after the Americans famous 1999 World Cup championship. Her first teammates included Hamm, Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain, Kristine Lilly and Joy Fawcett.
“It felt like, maybe five years ago, it was too much to bite off,” Wambach said. “I wasn’t sure if I could have the kind of impact that Mia and the Fab Five had.”
The win over North Korea, accomplished in a steady rain, assures the U.S. of a first-place finish in pool play which matches the Americans up with weaker teams in the next round.
North Korea has already been involved in controversy when the team refused to take the field against South Korea for more than an hour because a graphic on the scoreboard accidently showed a South Korean flag associated with a North Korean player. The team has also been kicked out of the 2015 World Cup for having five players tested positive for steroids. In this game, the North Koreans roughed up the Americans, picking up four yellow cards, with one resulting in a red card ejection.
Heather O’Reilly, starting her second game in a row, didn’t back off. The NBC announcers praised her for her blue-collar attitude, saying it was a coach’s dream to have a player with that kind of work ethic.
While O’Reilly got a deflection shot off that went just wide as she took a knee to the head, it was her defense up and down the sideline that proved her worth. While the U.S. offense dominated the first half, the North Koreans got several scoring chances in the second half. O’Reilly thwarted one of those opportunities when she seemingly came charging out of nowhere from a long way back to punch the ball away.
O’Reilly and fellow Tar Heel Tobin Heath played on the field at the same time for the first time in the Olympics as Heath got a second-half start in place of Kelly Rapino, whose favorite Olympian of all time by the way is UNC’s Michael Jordan.
Heath got a good look at the goal in the 49th minute when she rushed the goal from the left side but popped the ball just over the net. Her biggest challenge of the day may have come four minutes later when her shoe came off and she struggled to get it back on in a hurry. Play doesn’t stop for such things in soccer.
Heath or O’Reilly have been on the field during a opponents’ 256-minute scoreless streak. France scored twice in the first minutes of the opening game but the Americans haven’t allowed a goal since.
The U.S. is known as an aggressive team that always wants to score but for much of the last 15 minutes the Americans seemed to run a sort of Dean Smith Four Corners as they worked the ball around killing precious time.
The U.S team faces New Zealand in the quarterfinals on Friday.