It is clear that the American women football team’s longtime reign as the world’s number one ranked team is being seriously challenged. The world’s number three France convincingly defeated the American side in a friendly tournament hosted by the United States on Tuesday night in Washington.

In the final match of the SheBelieves Cup, France netted twice in the beginning ten minutes of the first half and added a goal in the second half, the black the home side 3-0. In the earlier match at RFK Stadium, Olympic champion edged England 1-0.

The United States were left on the bottom of the table, after all the fixtures in the group were played. France was at the top of the table with 7 points; Germany had 4, while England and U.S had 3 each. But, England had a better goal differential to finish ahead of the home side.

"We're extremely disappointed, obviously," said U.S. defender Julie Johnston. "But we're here to grow and learn. You know, we want to have as many tools as we can in order to grow and test ourselves and these are the teams you want to test yourselves with."

"We know they'll come back from this, but it's certainly disappointing," U.S. soccer fan Emily Rabinek told VOA. "I think they are just coming back from the hard loss from the Olympics last year, but I think they are going to see a turnaround. I am still feeling positive even after a hard loss tonight."

France did not take long to get the advantage against U.S. Eugenie Le Sommer was taken down in the penalty box in the 8th minute awarding her team a penalty. In less than two minutes Le Sommer stunned the home side by leading the score 2 to nil. Abiliy added a second half goal, giving France the title.

"We are really happy because we know it's really hard to beat the U.S. in the USA." said Abily. "So it's a great game we played. But we just want to keep going and it was really important for us to win this tournament."

"I think for the players it was a very good match, a very good match, in general," French coach Olivier Echouafni told VOA. "And getting the two goals during the first 10 minutes I think was a great thing for the beginning of the match."

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