United States women will play Netherlands away November 27

The United States women’s national team will play their 2019 World Cup final foe Netherlands again in an away game on November 27 in Breda.

This will be the WNT’s first international action since COVID-19 hit the United States, following on from a domestic camp that saw plenty of young and NWSL talent. This time Vlatko Andonovski will undoubtedly call in the stars who were missing due to being in Europe: Alex Morgan, Tobin Heath, Christen Press, Rose Lavelle, and Sam Mewis. Morgan is of particular interest here as she’s just about getting back to full match fitness after having a baby; she recently started and played 45 minute for Tottenham, but was pretty much stranded on an island as Spurs struggled to find her with the ball. Things will undoubtedly be different with the national team, which will have six training days in-country to prepare.

As the United States continues to be a hotspot of new COVID-19 cases, strong assurances about health and safety were probably necessary to facilitate this game. As it is, while the WNT has received an exemption from the normal quarantine required for international travel to the Netherlands, in their press release USSF said that everyone is required to be tested before travel, upon arrival, and every two days afterwards, and full team training cannot begin until all arrival tests are negative.

There’s no roster yet so we can only speculate on how Andonovski and USSF will want to treat the occasion; he was able to look more experimentally during his early domestic camp, and perhaps now will want to use this opportunity to try and keep up team cohesion, as well as keep up home support of the team with a good performance and at least try to get the ball rolling in preparation for the Olympics.

USA vs. Netherlands
Friday, November 27
12:30 PM ET / 9:30 AM PT
ESPN2, TUDN