The Paris Olympics Have Begun

Paris Olympics Opening Weekend

The USWNT with its star-studded team and new head coach Emma Hayes has officially made its arrival to the 2024 Paris Olympics. The USWNT opened up group play against Zambia Thursday night July 25th, with a 3-0 win. The game showed fans a glimpse of the new Big Three's potential. You may be wondering who are the “big three” and as many fans would agree it is the new USA lethal attacking front line consisting of Sophia Smith, Mallory Swanson and Trinity Rodman. A triple threat of speed, strength, and youth this new front line is here to win. Thursday's game against Zambia was a great start but everyone was looking forward to Sunday’s game against Germany. Many people had this game circled the moment groups were announced. With the US being in a growing phase it was going to be a tough battle against a strong Germany side. Emma Hayes started the game with the same front-line and they started firing on all cylinders right away. In the 10th min, Smith scored a beautiful shot from a distance that put the US up 1-0 but less than 10 min later Germany answered right back and squared it at 1-1. Swanson put us back up with a tap-in goal in the 26th minute, and right before half-time.

Smith got her second goal of the game off a shot that took a heavy deflection into the goal. Going into half it was 3-1 which was a surprising scoreline considering the prestige Germany holds in major tournaments. After half nothing much changed the US kept their foot on the gas pedal and had Germany against the ropes for the rest of the game. In the 85th minute, Lynn Williams was subbed on for Smith and immediately had an impact scoring a goal just 5 min later closing the capping off the game-ending goal giving us a 4-1 win over Germany. After winning the first two games the US has clinched a spot into the knockout stage with still one game left to play against Australia. With the Olympics being such a small tournament seeding and placement for the knockout rounds will be extremely important because results in the other groups are still up in the air going into match day 3 this Wednesday, July 31st at 10 am PT/ 1 pm ET.