When your opponent has a historically bad performance and a player scores an unheard-of three own goals, how do you evaluate a win?
That is the question for the United States women’s national team and coach Vlatko Andonovski, who beat New Zealand 5-0 in the SheBelieves Cup on Sunday with the help of Kiwi defender Meikayla Moore, who was credited with three own goals.
Moore’s goals were the USWNT’s first three before the New Zealand center-back was substituted in just the 40th minute, setting up an easy win before the Americans had really even earned it. In truth, the 2-0 score without the own goals may have been a better representation of how the match actually played out: the USWNT were a step off throughout the first half, but found their footing and scored twice in the second.
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Moore’s 50th cap started to unravel in just the fifth minute when forward Sophia Smith whipped a ball into the box and Moore tried to block it, but the ball skipped off her shin into the net from a wide angle. One minute later, full-back Sofia Huerta came from the opposite right side for a similar cross intended for Catarina Macario, but it knocked off the face of an unsuspecting Moore and in.
Only in the 36th minute did Moore make an obvious error: as Midge Purce whipped a short, skipping ball into the box, Moore’s swipe to clear the ball was ill-timed, causing her to kick it into goal rather than toward the sideline as intended.
Three own goals scored by one player in a single match, let alone a single half, is exceedingly rare. ESPN Stats & Information couldn’t find any other examples that weren’t part of a deliberate protest in any recent major competitions. Stan Van Den Buys was credited with three own goals in a Belgian league match in 1995, but video footage shows one of them wasn’t actually an…
Source : espn
