France and USA all set for Algarve Cup Final

Ahead of the Algarve Cup Final on Wednesday between the United States and France in Estadio Algarve, a press conference was held to give an opportunity to the media to ask both head coaches how they felt going into the game. 

The French team are in sombre mood this morning on hearing the devastating news of the helicopter crash in Argentina which killed a number of French citizens including three high profile French athletes. Coach Philippe Bergeroo offered his sympathies to the victims' families and as a mark of respect, the French team will wear black armbands in the final.

Both sides met in February during a European tour by the United States where France won 2 - 0 on the night and recorded their first ever victory against the United States. In terms of the game tomorrow, coach Philippe Bergeroo said he has a lot of respect for the United States who have won the tournament nine times previously and will be using this Final as a platform towards the World Cup in Canada in June.

United States head coach Jill Ellis stated both squads have a natural attacking style and the game should be fast paced with a lot of high quality technical and athletic players on show.

With regards to the loss suffered to France last month we asked Ellis what lessons were learned from the game and how will they be approaching the game tomorrow differently.

Ellis had the following to say to ExtraTime.ie.

"It was taken the girls into France to play in an away setting to play on turf (artificial grass) against a high quality team. It was the first time playing a high level team in this cycle since I got the job and we learnt a lot about ourselves.

“It's more for us about focusing on our performance, looking at players we have not seen for four or five years like Lori Chalupny able to see her in the France game, Meghan Klingenberg and seeing certain players against quality opposition. 

“My goal 7 or 8 months ago was to play the top 4 or 5 teams before we go to the World Cup and that's why we went to Brazil and travelled to England and France. We learned a lot of lessons about our players, about our personnel, about our strengths and weaknesses from that trip.  We were looking for a goalkeeper who could play behind Hope and I got those answers in these games and against France, we got Ashlyn."

The final kicks off at 4pm in Estadio Algarve and you can follow all the action of the Algarve Cup final live on ExtraTime.ie plus the behind the scene footage.