[ad_1]
AUSTIN, Texas — On Thursday, the U.S. Women’s National Team picked up where they left off in August: on the podium. Two hours before kick-off for the team’s first match since winning the 2024 Olympic Games, the 18 players in attendance from that team took to the field to face Iceland at the Q2 Arena and stood on a raised platform to record a pre-match television interview.
Gold was everywhere around the arena, from the medallion around Captain Lindsay Horan’s neck during the interview, to the Champions Edition aluminum water bottles and spiked soda cans. Thursday was, first and foremost, a celebration of the USWNT’s fifth Olympic gold medal.
“Just being back together is a celebration in itself,” USWNT striker Sophia Smith said later, after scoring in her team’s 3-1 win.
A few minutes after the smoke from the pre-match fireworks cleared, the whistle blew for kickoff and midfielder Rose Lavelle touched the ball into play. Thus, the page turned to the 2027 Women’s World Cup.
When Emma Hayes met reporters for the first time as USWNT coach in May, she used a common coaching phrase to describe the changing landscape of women’s soccer: “What got you here won’t get you there.”
It was being discussed how the USWNT could bounce back from a weak 2023 World Cup at this year’s Olympics, but the statement seemed more true Thursday as the USWNT began a three-game victory lap with a goal from a player who wasn’t. Even in the Olympics.
Nineteen-year-old striker Alyssa Thompson, playing in her first international match in nearly a year after regaining her form with Angel City, fired a shot off the underside of the crossbar in the 39th minute to give the Americans the lead. It was the first goal of her USWNT career.
Striker Yasmin Ryan and midfielder Hal Hirschfeldt came off the bench for their first international appearances in the second half. Hayes had promised to make his debut during next week’s three-game Victory Tour, and there will likely be more to come given the presence of six players who have not previously played in camp.
Thompson, Ryan, Hirschfeldt and dozens of other young players hope to break into the USWNT as Hayes lays out her strategy to win the 2027 World Cup. And that work has already begun. Hayes plans to use this international window, which includes a return match against Iceland on Sunday and a match against Argentina on Wednesday, to test new players. But all this experimentation could lead to some “volatile” performances, as the coach admitted earlier this week.
“One of the hardest things to do at international level is that we always want to see more players, but the more changes you make, the more disjointed the game becomes,” she said. “Football, like any sport, is about building connections and building relationships, and you can’t do that if relationships change in and out of the game.”
Hayes said the team looked “a little rusty” on Thursday, noting that most of the players are coming to the end of a long NFL season. Ten of the USWNT’s 11 starters on Thursday were from the Olympic gold medal-winning team, but a 3-1 win over Iceland would certainly qualify as less than ideal from a USWNT standpoint.
Hayes said key passes into the final third were missing in the first half and players were too slow to recognize when to switch plays across the pitch. She also noted that the Americans lost the physical battle to a compact and defensively disciplined Icelandic team.
“They were a physical team,” Hayes said of world No. 13-ranked Iceland. “Sometimes I want us to win the fight first, and there are parts of that I didn’t particularly like from us, and I’ll address that.”
Iceland scored an equalizer early in the second half as the USWNT midfield was overwhelmed in one quick sequence, and it took brilliant finishes from Smith and Jayden Shaw off the bench to break the deadlock in the final minutes of the game.
Both Shaw and Smith were part of the Olympic team – although Shaw did not play due to injury – and at 19 and 24 years old respectively, they will be a key part of Hayes’ plan moving forward. The USWNT coach said after the match that Shaw’s ability to create and score goals is unparalleled in this country, and that Smith “has become the prolific striker I want her to become.”
Hayes has the core of the squad she will develop to compete in the 2027 World Cup, but is still trying to study the player pool. The gold medal game was only Hayes’ 10th game at the helm after taking over in June. The players spoke this week about how they are getting to know their new coach, and that their development as a group is still just beginning, with Horan saying: “There will be massive growth for this team.”
Ryan is one of three players in her first USWNT camp. Hirschfeldt, who was a substitute on the Olympic team despite not making the national team, was never called up to youth national team camps. Nor was forward Emma Sears, who is training with the USWNT for the first time this week. A full roster of new players will train alongside the first team in January as Hayes conducts an identification camp. It will take time for so many new faces to adapt to what is known as the sport’s toughest environment – and existing players will need to adapt too.
“One is conversations and communication off the field,” Horan said. “Making the players feel comfortable but also knowing that they are new, that they have to know the level and the standards. It’s different from the club environment to this team, which is difficult. We’ve all been there and we have to do it.” Modify.
“I think that’s the reality of it: you have to let these players know that this is the job at hand, but again, they’re all here for a reason. I’m sure they’ll do a great job. We’ve only had one training session on this.” Camp so far, and we will do everything we can to make them feel welcome.”
0:48
How the USWNT won its first game since the Olympic gold medal
The USWNT beat a plucky Iceland in Austin, their first match since claiming Olympic gold in Paris.
Her “biggest goal is to expand the pool of players,” Hayes said. A deeper pool of players will bring competition and more diversity in skills, which Hayes claims will lead to a variety of ways to beat teams.
The margins are thinner than ever in women’s football. The USWNT won all three knockout matches at the Olympics by scores of 1-0 – two of them after overtime. The team “suffered” through the championship win, Hayes said at the time, generating results and generating top quality from an unstoppable offensive line.
Just a year earlier Spain had won their first World Cup, and the Americans had suffered a different kind of suffering with their worst result at a major tournament in history: a round-of-16 exit after losing on penalties to Sweden after an accidental shot. The line is a millimeter. The 2023 World Cup revealed that the USWNT is too predictable, and showed how much other teams have improved.
“The reality is that it’s very difficult to create some traditional advantage, whether that’s numerical superiority, or technical advantage, for example,” Hayes said this week. “You have to find a different way to be able to do it.”
What got the Americans to the podium at the Olympics won’t get them there at the next World Cup. The next three years require evolution, and that process began Thursday.
[ad_2]
