The Football Ferns have only ever beaten the USA once and the chances of that happening again over the next couple of days are remote.<\/p>\n
But local football fans are excited to see the world’s best side in action as a prelude to the FIFA World Cup being hosted by New Zealand and Australia later this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Winning is always important, but the two sides go into these two games with completely different approaches.<\/p>\n
The Football Ferns have conceded either 5 or 6 goals in their last four games against the USA and with an understrength lineup for these matches, they’re facing something similar again.<\/p>\n
The USA are ranked number one in the world and the Ferns 24.<\/p>\n
Ferns coach Jitka Klimkova wouldn’t define what a good result would be for them, but promised they’ll be competitive.<\/p>\n
“We know that we are underdogs and we know that we don’t have a full squad, but I really believe you will see a fight.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t matter what is going to happen, our focus is on the things that we can control.”<\/p>\n
New Zealand is missing many of their top players, who haven’t been freed from their clubs, because these games fall outside the FIFA international window.<\/p>\n
US midfielder Rose Leville, who scored in the last World Cup final, appreciates New Zealand isn’t at full strength.<\/p>\n
“I know a lot of their players didn’t get released but we’ve obviously played them a lot and it’s always a good test,” said Leville on their arrival in the country.<\/p>\n
“For us to get two games this early in the year is very valuable and with it not being a FIFA break it does give us an advantage.”<\/p>\n
The games are almost secondary for the Americans, who have vast experience in their squad including a number of players from their last two World Cup victories.<\/p>\n
\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Football Ferns have only ever beaten the USA once and the chances of that happening again over the next couple of days are remote. But local football fans are excited to see the world’s best side in action as a prelude to the FIFA World Cup being hosted by New Zealand and Australia later […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2292,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions\/2292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}