Tuesday night’s friendly between the US and Sweden at Morrison Stadium in Omaha, Nebraska, featured three Philadelphia Independence players. Amy Rodriguez and Lori Lindsey both started for the US and Caroline Seger captained the Sweden team.

WPS Player of the Month Rodriguez has been on fire for the Independence and she scored her eighth international goal one minute before halftime to put the US up 1–0.

“It was a great goal,” Rodriguez said. “I was happy to do that for my country.”

The offensive duo of Rodriguez and Abby Wambach were responsible for 14 of the team’s 18 shots and all seven of the shots on goal.

Rodriguez had a strong performance throughout the match and nearly made it 2–0 when her header off of a pass from Heather O’Reilly banged off of the crossbar.

“That was a little bit unfortunate,” Rodriguez said. “My specialty really isn’t heading.”

Sweden counterattacked when the ball was cleared and Linda Forsberg was able to chip the advanceing US keeper, Nicole Barnhart.

It was the first goal allowed by the US at home in 884 minutes of play stretching back to November 1, 2008 and only the third goal allowed by Barnhart in 23 career games for the US.

Lori Lindsey had a strong first half but was substituted in the second.

US coach Pia Sundhage said, “We scored a great goal, and I thought in our first half we did well. Then we made some changes that were decided before the game, and I think it wasn’t as good in the second half. We lost a little bit when we decided to go 4-3-3, and we lost too much in the midfield and that’s how they created chances. We had a chance to score to make it 2-0, and they scored to make it 1-1. It’s good to have another game coming up, and we can try again.”

Caroline Seger played the full 90 minutes for Sweden. In the 73rd minute Sweden almost took the lead with some fine give and go work between Seger and Linnea Liljegärd but the return pass was behind Seger and she was unable to get a shot off.

The teams will conclude their two-game series of friendlies on Saturday, July 17th when they meet at East Hartford, Connecticut. FSC will show the match live beginning at 7:30pm.