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The story of New Zealand’s journey within the Girls’s World Cup, and of its exit on Sunday evening, shall be a well-known one to the staff and its followers: not sufficient targets for New Zealand, and too many for everybody else.
For New Zealand, a co-host of the event with Australia, the experience had begun on a excessive. The staff had earned its first-ever World Cup victory within the occasion’s opening match, main a rugby-mad nation to stir, if solely momentarily, for girls’s soccer. For a couple of days, even larger achievements appeared attainable.
However the opening victory had been slender — the Soccer Ferns, because the staff is thought, had scored a single objective — and maybe that was an indication. New Zealand by no means scores a lot, and it by no means scored once more on the World Cup, eradicated quietly on Sunday in Dunedin after a 0-0 tie with Switzerland that was the house staff’s ninth goalless outing in 12 video games this yr.
“Clearly we talked and we had been pleased with ourselves and what we’ve been in a position to accomplish, however on the finish of the day we needed to get out of this group stage and we simply didn’t,” New Zealand midfielder Malia Steinmetz mentioned. “It’s simply black and white.”
In Auckland, in the meantime, Norway was raining targets on the Philippines, successful by 6-0 to avoid wasting what had appeared to be a star-crossed marketing campaign. When the whistles blew to finish each video games, the maths was unforgiving for the host nation: Switzerland and Norway had been shifting on, and New Zealand was out.
With that elimination, New Zealand grew to become the primary host ever eradicated within the group stage, a destiny that Australia will attempt to not match in its personal must-win recreation towards Canada on Monday. Not even firm will ease the sting for the Ferns, although.
Norway, however, will really feel resurrected after a cold evening in Auckland. It had not significantly loved the view from final place over the previous week, not when it misplaced to New Zealand in its opener, not when its star Caroline Graham Hansen publicly challenged her coach to revive her to the lineup after which apologized for her outburst, not when the striker Ada Hegerberg sat out once more with an harm.
Confronted with the humiliation of going out by the hands of the Philippines, although, one thing stirred within the Norwegians.
Ahead Sophie Roman Haug scored on a one-time volley after solely six minutes, then doubled her whole with a header after solely 17. Graham Hansen made it 3-0 earlier than the half, then despatched within the cross that was turned in for a Philippines personal objective three minutes after halftime.
That silenced a profoundly pro-Philippines crowd of greater than 34,000, and allowed Norway to put aside per week of grumbling and whispers of locker room discontent.
“We felt it was us towards the world at this time and we carried out from the very begin, delivering after we actually needed to,” Norway Coach Hege Riise mentioned. “This was the perfect response we might have given the Norwegian folks and ourselves.”
Guro Reiten’s penalty made it 5 after which Roman Haug added her third, and Norway’s sixth, in harm time and that was that. However by then everybody knew it was over anyway, and the one final result that mattered was the one in Dunedin, the place New Zealand pressed and pressed for the objective that by no means got here, the prospect to vary a scoreline the Ferns knew completely wouldn’t suffice.
When it didn’t arrive, when the whistle blew for full time, the gamers’ shocked faces advised the story of a event that began brightly and, for them, is now over far too quickly.
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