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Fox's SheBelieves Cup coverage includes live streaming of non-U.S. games

This year's SheBelieves Cup games will come with an added element for fans in the United States. In addition to television coverage of all three U.S. games on Fox networks, you'll be able to watch the three non-U.S. games on Fox's authenticated streaming platform, Fox Sports Go.

This year's SheBelieves Cup games will come with an added element for fans in the United States. In addition to television coverage of all three U.S. games on Fox networks, you'll be able to watch the three non-U.S. games on Fox's authenticated streaming platform, Fox Sports Go.

Those games are produced for international broadcasts, so it itsn't difficult for Fox to take the feeds. Last year's non-U.S. games were also produced for international broadcasts, but were not taken by any U.S. outlet.

Fox is not only taking them, its crew is running the production of them. Veteran producer Shaw Brown will be at the helm in the truck. Carlos de Molina will run Fox's U.S. game broadcasts.

The U.S. games will also be available through Fox Soccer 2 Go, the network's paid subscription streaming platform. The non-U.S. games will not be on that platform.

Click here for the full SheBelieves Cup schedule.

When the cameras turn to action on the field, there will be some names you might not recognize - and not just on the teams the U.S. will be playing.

If you don't watch the National Women's Soccer League, you might not know much about players like forward Jessica McDonald of the North Carolina Courage, or midfielder Rose Lavelle, this year's No. 1 draft pick by the Boston Breakers.

And if you didn't watch the U.S. team's friendlies at the end of 2016, you might not know much about Courage forward Lynn Williams, who had a sensational year for club and country. She won the NWSL MVP and Golden Boot awards, helped the Western New York Flash win the championship, and scored her first national team goal just 49 seconds into her first cap.

Fox executive producer David Neal will gladly introduce you to them during the SheBelieves Cup.

"It's incumbent on us as producers to do exactly that," he told me in a recent interview. "Telling the stories not only of Carli [Lloyd] and Alex [Morgan], who we love, and [Meghan] Klingenberg and all of them, but also some of the new players who are, to your point, not nearly as familiar yet. But I would emphasize the word 'yet.' We will make sure that they are familiar in the two years-plus we have to run between now and France."

Expect to see a feature during the U.S.-England broadcast produced by Jennifer Pransky, who led a unit during the 2015 Women's World Cup that delivered features on players across the tournament.

Neal is not one to turn down any opportunity to showcase the national team. This particular opportunity, though, is one he genuinely views as a big deal.

"Jill [Ellis] is a mastermind at building her roster with the strength that she needs, [and] I think this is an important milestone along the way," he said. "The spotlight is on them... I think in every respect, it is an important tournament."

Neal also admitted that the tournament has particular importance for Fox, because "it's one of those last moments where we get to really focus on the U.S. women's team before the buildup to the [men's] World Cup in Russia really gets going in earnest later in the summertime."

Translation: there's only so much air time and production staff to spread around the soccer sphere, even for Fox.

Neal's upcoming docket includes the Confederations Cup from June 17 to July 2, the CONCACAF Gold Cup from July 7 to 26, and U.S. men's World Cup qualifiers throughout the year - including the March 24 game vs. Honduras and the June 11 game at Mexico.

Those events are all big. The World Cup is enormous.

"It's coming fast, too," Neal said. "It gets my attention every morning when I wake up and look at the calendar."

Neal has been making regular trips to Moscow to get a first-hand look at how things are going. He learned while working for NBC's Olympics production team that there can never be enough preparation for a global sporting spectacle.

"The further away the host city is, the more imperative it is that you make regular trips over there, because it's kind of the old axiom 'Out of sight, out of mind,' " he said. "You go trying to advance your plans, trying to make sure that the arrangements are being made well ahead of time. Because it's not lost on any of us here that when we go to the World Cup, we're one of 200 broadcasters. It's not a situation where we walk in and we're the only rights-holder."

The more he shows up, the better the odds are that he can, as he put it, "make sure that our interests are advancing."

What has Neal seen in Moscow? He described the mood in tournament circles as "very positive," added that "the venues are magnificent," and concluded that he has "no doubt" Russia will put on a good World Cup.

The cynics among us might expect those kinds of answers. We might at least agree to hope the execution ends up as good as the renderings.

Here's something that's harder to argue about. Russia's organizing committee smartly put all 11 host cities in the western third of the country. Neal said his crunching of the numbers showed that no city is more than a two-hour flight from any other. The longest flight between any two cities - Kaliningrad in the west to Ekaterinburg in the east - takes about as long as a flight from Los Angeles to New York.

Right now, Neal only needs to worry about a few train rides between Philadelphia, New York and Washington. For while the SheBelieves Cup is just one of many courses on Fox's menu, it's going to be plenty filling.

The Twitter handle above is for my general news reporting. My soccer handle is @thegoalkeeper. Contact me there for any questions about this post.