Send Off Series: USA vs. Mexico - July 1st | Starting XI, Lineup Notes & TV Channels

2021 WNT Send-Off Series, Presented by Visa
Date: July 1, 2021
Venue: Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field; East Hartford, Conn.
Broadcast: FS1, UniMás, TUDN
Broadcast Time: 7:00 p.m. ET on FS1, 7:30 ET on UniMás & TUDN
Official Kickoff Time: 7:38 p.m. ET

 

Starting XI vs. Mexico: 1-Alyssa Naeher; 5-Kelley O’Hara, 17-Abby Dahlkemper, 4-Becky Sauerbrunn (Capt.), 2-Crystal Dunn; 9-Lindsey Horan, 3-Samantha Mewis, 6-Kristie Mewis; 11-Christen Press, 13-Alex Morgan, 15-Megan Rapinoe

 

Available Subs: 7-Tobin Heath, 10-Carli Lloyd, 12-Tierna Davidson, 14-Emily Sonnett, 16-Rose Lavelle, 18-Adrianna Franch, 19-Catarina Macario

 

 

GAME NOTES | FIVE THINGS TO KNOW – MEXICO

• U.S. WNT Starting XI Cap Numbers (including this match): Sauerbrunn (187), Morgan (179), Rapinoe (178), Press (148), O’Hara (139), Dunn (115), Horan (97), S. Mewis (76), Naeher (72), Dahlkemper (70), K. Mewis (25)

• The Starting XI against Mexico is nearly identical to the XI that closed out the Summer Series against Nigeria on June 16, with the only change being Morgan for Lloyd up top.

• The starting lineup against Mexico also features four changes from the Starting XI that took the field against Mexico on February 7, 2020, to clinch a spot in the 2020 Olympics: Kristie Mewis and Lindsey Horan will start in the midfield in place of Julie Ertz and Rose Lavelle, and Alex Morgan and Christen Press will start on the forward line for Carli Lloyd and Tobin Heath.

• Becky Sauerbrunn will captain the side in what will be her 187^th cap for the USWNT. The 36-year-old Sauerbrunn, who will be making her third trip to the Olympics, leads the team in minutes played in 2021 at 720 minutes.

• Connecticut native Alyssa Naeher will earn her 72^nd cap, playing less than 60 miles from her hometown of Stratford, Connecticut. Naeher, who is third for goalkeepers in USWNT history in both caps and shutouts (42) has earned one previous cap in Connecticut, a 1-1 draw against Australia on July 29, 2018 at Rentschler Field. Naeher has posted a clean sheet in 13 of her last 14 appearances for the USWNT.

• Kelley O’Hara will make her seventh start of 2021 and is set to earn her 139^th cap overall. This will be the fifth start in the last six games for O’Hara, who was named to her third Olympic roster.

• Abby Dahlkemper will make her 70th appearance for the USWNT, which will also be her 63^rd start in 70 caps. Dahlkemper, who led the USA in total minutes in both 2019 and 2020, was named to her first Olympic roster and becomes the 50^th player in USWNT history to reach the 70-cap milestone.

• Long Island native Crystal Dunn will make her tenth appearance and ninth start of 2021 with tonight’s match against Mexico, pushing her overall cap total to 115. Dunn will have now played in 40 of the USA’s 44 games since the start of 2019, making 38 starts over that span. She is fourth on the team in total minutes played in 2021 with 661.

• Lindsey Horan will make her 97^th international appearance with tonight’s match against Mexico, continuing to close in on the 100-cap milestone. Horan has appeared in every game for the USA so far in 2021 – a distinction she shares with Carli Lloyd – and tallied a goal or an assist in 11 of her last 18 appearances for the USA, with nine goals and seven assists during that span. In her last match in Hartford, Horan scored in the final minute of regulation for the equalizing goal in a 1-1 draw vs. Australia in the 2018 Tournament of Nations.

• Massachusetts native Samantha Mewis will earn her 76^th cap for the USWNT and is second on the team in scoring with four goals in 2021. She scored the lone goal in the USA’s 1-0 win over Portugal on June 10 to kick off the Summer Series.

• Kristie Mewis is set to make her third start of the year in what will be her 25^th career cap overall. Kristie started in the USA’s 6-0 win over Argentina in the final game of the 2021 SheBelieves Cup, scoring a goal and dishing out an assist in the victory, and started again in the Summer Series finale vs Nigeria. Kristie is the lone member of the Olympic Team who was not a member of the 2019 FIFA World Cup Champions and has appeared in nine of the USA’s 11 games since the resumption of play in November 2020, with three goals and one assist in her return to the National Team.

• With both Kristie and Sam in the starting lineup, this will be the second consecutive match and third time overall that the Mewis sisters have started together for the USWNT. Samantha and Kristie started and shared the field together for 61 minutes in the June 16 win over Nigeria in the Summer Series. Prior to that, their only other start together came on March 10, 2014, in a 5-3 loss to Denmark in the Algarve Cup.

• The match against Mexico will mark their seventh game together on the field for the USWNT, extending a record for most games played together with sisters on the U.S. team. With this game, the Mewis sisters now have 101 combined caps – 75 for Sam and 26 for Kristie.

• Christen Press will earn her 148^th cap tonight and will make her eighth consecutive start, the longest streak of consecutive starts in her USWNT career. Press has now started 10 of the last 11 matches for which she has been available and is in the middle of one of the finest stretches of her career as she has been directly involved in 34 goals in her last 35 games for the USWNT, scoring 14 goals with 18 assists.

• Press has tallied an assist in each of her last four appearances for the USWNT, tied for the longest such streak of her career. The USWNT record for the most consecutive USWNT games with an assist is five, done three times previously and last by Shannon MacMillan in 1997. Megan Rapinoe recorded an assist in six consecutive appearances in 2018, though did not appear in every USA match during that span.

• Playing in her final game as a 31-year-old (her birthday is July 2), Alex Morgan will earn her 179^th career cap with tonight’s match against Mexico. Since opening her account in 2010 against China, Morgan has scored against 29 different teams – the most coming against Japan (12 goals). She has scored nine goals against Canada and Mexico, seven against France, and six against Costa Rica, New Zealand, Sweden and Trinidad & Tobago.

• Morgan is the 13^th mom to play for the USWNT and is the eighth player to score as a mom. The first seven were: Joy Fawcett (13 goals as a mom), Danielle Fotopoulos (5), Amy Rodriguez (4), Jessica McDonald (2), Kate Markgraf (1), Kristine Lilly (1) and Tina Ellertson (1). Morgan is now fourth all-time in goals as a mom with three.

• Megan Rapinoe will make her second consecutive start for the USA and earn her 178^th career cap overall. Rapinoe leads the USA in scoring with seven goals in 2021 and now has 59 career goals with the USWNT, moving past the great Carin Gabarra and into 11^th all-time. She is one score from tying Shannon MacMillan for 10^th all-time.