FIFA Women’s World Cup: Germany eliminates Sweden with 4-1 win

After coasting through the preliminary round of the Women’s World Cup, forwards Anja Mittag and Celia Sasic provided a dominating reminder of why Germany is deserving of its top-rank billing.

Sasic scored twice, and Mittag added a goal and drew a penalty to set up another, in helping Germany advance to the quarterfinals with a 4-1 win in Ottawa, Ontario, to eliminate fifth-ranked Sweden in a Round of 16 game on Saturday.

“Benchmark? Yes. We measure ourselves against what we know we can achieve,” German coach Silvia Neid said through an interpreter. “It was a very important game, maybe it was a key match because we haven’t had many games of this quality yet in this World Cup.”

Germany’s only first-round blemish was a 1-1 tie against Norway. Otherwise, the Germans routed the Ivory Coast and Thailand, in scoring a tournament-best 15 goals.

Now the two-time World Cup champions will travel to Montreal, where they will face the winner of today’s match between third-ranked France and South Korea.

Disappointing as the finish was for Sweden, which ended the tournament without a victory, coach Pia Sundhage acknowledged it was going to take a near-perfect effort to beat Germany.

“Germany is a very good team, and they deserve to advance,” Sundhage said. “We fought and we tried, but it was not good enough.”

Mittag opened the scoring in the 24th minute, and then Sasic scored the next two – including one on a penalty kick – in staking Germany to a 3-0 lead by the 78th minute.

The Swedes finally countered with Linda Sembrant scoring on a header off Therese Sjogran’s free kick from outside the box in the 82nd minute.

Dzsenifer Marozsan then sealed the win by scoring in the 88th minute.

The Germans improved to 18-7 all-time against Sweden. And they’ve won 12 of the past 14 meetings, since defeating Sweden 2-1 in the 2003 World Cup championship game.

China 1, Cameroon 0: Wang Shanshan scored early and China held on for a knockout-round victory over upstart Cameroon in Edmonton, Alberta.

China, ranked No. 16 in the world, will play the winner of Monday night’s game between the U.S. and Colombia.

China was playing without its head coach Hao Wei on the sidelines, after he was sent off from the team’s final group stage match against New Zealand.