I'm not sure the Dutch even had a shot on goal in their last friendly against the United States, which wasn't that long ago, a 2-0 defeat. The U.S. defense is rather better than Zambia's and China's! The Dutch midfield will have to play well, needless to say, but they don't match up particularly well with the beefy Ertz, Mewis and Horan (and Lavelle). I thought Wiegman would rest her key players today; instead, she played most of them--some for 90'--in a 8-2 walloping of a hapless China squad. She seemed to be more interested in sharpening performance as opposed to rest, and we'll see how that works out.
And Brazil-Zambia decided to play the party pooper! The other matches in this group had, respectively, 5, 13 , 6, 8 and 10 goals, with an average (!) of 8,4 goals per game ... then you have just 1 goal in Brazil-Zambia , and the average drops (!) to "just" 7,1666... (well, not bad anyway! ).
Cannot see anyone catching Miedema. 8 goals is the most scored by one player in any Women’s Olympic Games. Golden Boot race...🇳🇱 8 - Vivianne Miedema🇿🇲 6 - Barbra Banda (Out)🇨🇳 4 - Wang Shuang (Out)🇳🇱 4 - Lieke MartensKerr, White, Blackstenius, Marta and Beerensteyn all on 3.— Rich Laverty (@RichJLaverty) July 27, 2021
Well it will be hard but so far Blackstenius have 3 goals in 95 minutes played, so if she keeps that up and Sweden reaches SF she should be able to score 8 or 9 more. But it is unlikely that she is given 90 minutes playing time in every match remaining.
I am assuming these games are going to get much tighter now it is knockout football (I could be wrong in this weird COVID era). Scoring 5 goals in the knockout stages would be some achievement.
Not the way the US is playing. If the US played Zambia, I would not have been surprised to see the US lose.