Mallory Swanson Brace Thrills Twitter as USA Beat Canada in 2023 SheBelieves Cup

Mallory Swanson took care of Canada all by herself in the first half.

The United States forward tallied a brace within 34 minutes as the United States beat Canada 2-0 on Thursday night in the SheBelieves Cup.

Alyssa Naeher added some stunning goalkeeping to locked down the clean sheet:

This was convincing from the United States. The Americans held 53 percent of possession, outshot Canada 14-6 (7-3 on target) and took six corners to four from their opponents.

It was a total team performance, but Swanson was the story after her impressive brace. No surprises there, as she's now scored in four straight games:

It was a fantastic showing for the United States, though tough tests are on the horizon, with Japan (Sunday, Feb. 9 at 3:30 p.m. ET) and Brazil (Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. ET) up next at the SheBelieves Cup.

Thursday's match was played under the all-too-familiar context of pay inequity between the men's and women's games, with Canada playing the SheBelieves Cup under protest because of a pay dispute with the Canadian soccer federation.

"I think we've made it pretty clear that we're operating under a protest at the minute so we made a decision as a team that we were going to do this and show our solidarity together and this is one of the ways that we decided to do that," Canada forward Janine Beckie told reporters.

The USWNT players showed their support for that protest before the game:

"There's just some things that are so much bigger than what is happening on the field and this is one of them," United States forward Megan Rapinoe said before the match while expressing "100 percent" support for the protest. "This is about just basic human rights and respect and getting what they deserve. I mean, we're talking about the Olympic champions here, so that was so well-deserved and such a huge step forward for them."