The United States women‘s national team will host world No. 1 and reigning World Cup champions Spain in a pair of friendly matches in October, U.S. Soccer announced on Monday.
The world’s top two teams will play at Audi Field in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 10 before meeting again on Oct. 13 at Subaru Park in Chester, Pennsylvania, in two pivotal tune-up games for the 2027 World Cup. The U.S. women are the reigning Olympic champions and four-time World Cup winners.
“Two more fantastic matches,” USWNT head coach Emma Hayes said in a statement. “We’ve desperately wanted to get Spain on our schedule, but the difficulties of scheduling the top teams during the women’s international calendar are well known, so to be able to get these two games on the East Coast will be the perfect tests before we head into World Cup qualifying at the end of the year.”
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Spain has only played the USWNT on U.S. soil once previously, at the 2020 SheBelieves Cup. The USWNT won that match, 1-0.
The two teams last played in October 2022, in Pamplona, Spain, when a second-choice La Roja side comfortably defeated the USWNT 2-0. They then went on to win the Women’s World Cup for the first time nine months later.
It is an increasingly difficult task for the United States to schedule top European opponents due to Europe‘s long qualifying process. Spain is available for the matches in October by way of winning its qualifying group and avoiding Europe’s World Cup qualifying playoffs. Spain prevailed atop a difficult group ahead of fellow world heavyweight England, the 2023 World Cup runners-up.
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The USWNT is expected to utilize U.S. Soccer’s new national training center for the first time ahead of the October matches, a federation spokesperson told ESPN. The national training center outside of Atlanta, Georgia, opened earlier this year.
The matches will be the first in four months for both Spain and the United States.
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Spain wrapped up World Cup qualifying in early June, including an emphatic 4-0 victory over England that helped clinch direct qualification.
The United States went to Brazil, which will host next year’s World Cup, in June and split a pair of friendly matches with the hosts. Brazil won the first match 2-1 before dropping a 1-0 result in a scrappy game.
