The US Women’s National Team will face Switzerland tomorrow evening at 7:30 PM at the Wake Med Soccer Park in Cary, NC.
Wake Med Soccer Park, an intimate venue which seats approximately 10,000, will be completely packed tomorrow night as tickets for the game sold out roughly 48 hours after going on sale.
Switzerland was the first team to qualify for the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada and are a side the USA has never played before.
Switzerland may not have any World Cup experience, but the young team has made impressive strides under head coach Martina Voss. USA head coach Jill Ellis mentioned she knows Voss by reputation and highlighted both Switzerland’s offensive speed and defensive organization.
“They have a lot of good attacking personalities and are organized defensively,” said Ellis. “They have a German coach. They have been successful and they are going to be a very tough opponent for us.”
Tomorrow’s match is a valuable learning opportunity for the USA to play an unfamiliar and technical side that they could face next summer in Canada. However, the timing of the match is less than ideal as it falls in the middle of the week only days after the end of the NWSL regular season and a few days before the NWSL semifinals.
When asked about the value of playing the Swiss team tomorrow Ellis said “I think the important thing is we get as many good opponents as possible, so scheduling teams around this time may not be ideal, but it is certainly an opportunity for us to play a World Cup qualified team.” Ellis also added that the game was scheduled before she was hired.
The match is being played during a FIFA reserved date window so the question seems like it should be less about why the national team is playing and more about why the domestic league has chosen to schedule matches so close to FIFA reserved dates.
Ellis only called up 19 players for the friendly including a couple of relatively new faces to the senior team including Alyssa Naeher and Allie Long. Ellis spoke about watching players throughout the NWSL season and explained “the NWSL is certainly a platform for me to evaluate players.”
Tomorrow may be an important milestone in USWNT history as Hope Solo has an opportunity to surpass Briana Scurry and become the solo owner of the shutout record for the USWNT. Solo is looking to earn her 72nd career shutout. Her 71 shutouts to date were earned over a 14 year career against 16 different countries.
There is little doubt that Jill Ellis will play a first choice Starting XI tomorrow night as she has continually stressed the importance of building chemistry between players in preparation for World Cup qualifiers in October and the World Cup next summer.
Notably, Alex Morgan, Sydney Leroux, and Abby Wambach separated from the group near the end of practice to do a few drills on their own with assistant coach Tony Gustavsson. I would expect those three to play up top in a 4-3-3 tomorrow. Morgan, Leroux, and Wambach have only started together once before in October 2013 against Australia. The USA cruised to a convincing 4-0 victory in that match.
The match will be livestreamed tomorrow at 7:30 PM on ussoccer.com.