Women's Olympic Qualifying

The CONCACAF Women's Olympic qualifying tournament group stage started Thursday night (1.19.12) in Vancouver. The group stages consists of eight teams divided into two groups of four, with each team playing the other only once (this is the same format as the World Cup group stages, only with fewer groups obviously). The top two teams in each group advance to the semifinals, with only the winners advancing to this summer's Olympics in London. As opposed to this past Women's World Cup (hereafter referred to as WWC), the third place team will not be given a qualifying playoff with a team from other federation.

The Caribbean Zone qualifying started in June, with the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba advancing, while the Central American Zone qualifying started in September with Costa Rica and Guatamala advancing to the group stage. Mexico, Canada, and the United States advanced directly to the group stage. Group A consists of Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, and Haiti; Group B has USA, Mexico, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic.

Match Day One had Canada besting Haiti 6-0 and Costa Rica over Haiti 2-0 in Group A, with Mexico over Guatemala 5-0, and USA thrashing the Dominican Republic 14-0 (highlights and post-game reaction). The group stage continues through Tuesday (when USA faces Mexico at 7:30 PST), with the semi-finals on Friday (5:00 and 8:00 PST) and the finals on Sunday (5:00 PST). All games can be streamed for free here.

Coach Pia Sundage has taken heat after the game for pushing her players to run up the score, and for continuing to celebrate each goal in an excessive manner. Indeed, Abby Wambach encouraged her teammates to up the ante at halftime, even as she was substitued: "We want to win our group stage, and ... it might come down to goal differential." As the team squeaked into the WWC this summer, and goal differential is a tie breaker, she does not want to take any chances. The women were up 3-0 in under 6 minutes, with the first goal coming in 37 seconds. Substitute Amy Rodriquez tied a Women's National Team (WNT) with 5 goals (all coming in the first 30 minutes of the second half), Heather O'Reilly adding a hat trick, Abby Wambach scored twice in the first half, and Lloyd, Cheney, Heath and Buehler tallied along the way.

The game wasn't all roses though, as right back Ali Krieger suffered a serious knee injury and is unlikely to return. She should undergo a MRI today, so the team will know if she will be available for the tournament in London or will be out for much longer. UPDATE: Krieger tore her ACL and MCL and will be out for nine months. Abby Wambach banged up her left knee a bit but should be fine to continue in the tournament. "We want her to last as long as we can in this tournament, which is one reason we took her out at halftime," Sundage said.