For the first time in a long time, it feels like the U.S. Women’s National Team truly has a fresh slate.
With longtime veterans Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn not on the 2024 roster, and younger stars Jaedyn Shaw and Trinity Rodman preparing for their Olympic debuts, there is a sense that this tournament really is a new group of players.
“(We respect) our history, but at the same time we are also trying to write a new story for this team,” defender Naomi Girma said before the team’s Olympic farewell matches. “To participate in this tournament… that’s something we’re really working on and consciously working on: ‘What are we going to take with us and what do we need to change in the future?’ I think it’s important for every team and program to do that to remain successful.”
However, there is sufficient continuity of the old guard. Crystal Dunn, Lindsey Horan and Alyssa Naeher are just some of the players who bring with them a thread of history and stability dating back to 2015, when Naeher was a reserve goalkeeper at the World Cup. However, only seven of the players from the 2019 World Cup-winning squad are now at these Olympic Games in France. Without Morgan on the call sheet, there is no remaining Olympic gold medalist.
It’s a good core group of experienced players to have, while also leaving plenty of room for relatively younger players – something that was inherent in the design of head coach Emma Hayes, who only officially joined the group at the end of May.
“As we look at the accumulation of the team, there is a lack of development, of putting some of the less experienced players in positions where they can develop that experience,” Hayes said after unveiling her tournament roster. “I think it’s important that we have to do that to take the next step. So I won’t look back.”
With a new atmosphere comes a new search for identity. This 2024 team cannot help but be aware that the United States, so accustomed to a certain level of global dominance, has not won a major tournament since that heady period of 2019. There have been only two major tournaments since then, but the United States were knocked out of the Tokyo Olympics by underdog rival Canada, leaving them with a bronze medal against Australia three years ago. And at the 2023 World Cup they played a round of 16, after which they fell to Sweden on penalties.
“We’ve gone further than last summer,” Sophia Smith said during a media call in Marseille before they faced Zambia in their opening Group B match. “It’s a completely new environment and opportunity, lots of new players. We only look ahead. At this point we’re taking it one game at a time, and with Emma coming in, we’ve learned a lot, we’ve grown a lot and we’ve introduced a lot of new things that I think will help us be successful. at this tournament.”
This team is determined not to let the specter of 2023 hang over them. It’s part of the paradox of any team history: you are inevitably shaped by past successes and failures, but you can’t commit to them. You have to learn from mistakes without thinking about them.
This new team — which includes eight of the 22 players who weren’t even born when the 99ers elevated the American Women to legacy status — hasn’t yet settled into a definitive atmosphere, at least not publicly. Understandably, they’re still feeling emotional as a group, considering they haven’t even had a firm hand on the helm until Hayes arrived in late May, and before that spent nine months with an interim head coach.
“The transition was not the easiest in many ways,” Dunn said. “But I think the team did a fantastic job of not missing a beat.
“Obviously we left the World Cup not feeling too great about our performance, but I think at the end of the day we knew we had an incredible opportunity to regroup and get back at it.”
Dunn is one of the more experienced players to usher in the new era. (Photo by Howard Smith, Getty Images for USSF)
That doesn’t mean they don’t have leadership. In addition to Captain Horan, many players have mentioned Dunn, Girma, Tierna Davidson, Rose Lavelle and Emily Sonnett as providing guidance and support. And there are really only four players on the Olympic core roster without previous Olympic or senior World Cup experience: Korbin Albert, Sam Coffey, Jenna Nighswonger and Shaw. Of the alternates, Hal Hershfelt, Croix Bethune and Emily Sams are also new but expected to see less field time, while alternate goalkeeper Jane Campbell was in Tokyo, also as an alternate.
There is a feeling that, from the newer players in the mix, this could be the tournament that starts to define the next core group of players; the dawn of the next era of USWNT superstars.
Although Girma is only 24, she is already highly regarded as a candidate for captaincy, amid her excellent play as a centre-back. Davidson, who could finally establish herself as Girma’s defensive partner if she can stay healthy, is only 25, while fullback Nighswonger is 23.
In attack, the US has some of the most exciting names in global football, such as Rodman (22), Smith (23) and Mallory Swanson (26). Add in Shaw, at 19, and even Bethune at 23, and American fans should be breaking down doors to see these players compete together in the 2027 World Cup. And if 24-year-old midfield phenom Catarina Macario is healthy can become and remain, the sky is the limit under the right coach.
Compatibly combining older and newer players is never a given, but this current group appears to have done so through a mix of player- and staff-led communications. The word “fun” was on everyone’s lips when asked what emotions were in the air and what social dynamics were beginning to manifest among a different group of players. Sonnett, who has been in and out of the USWNT mix since 2015, called the team “a pretty crazy group” and described a dynamic with more room for play, such as a round of Heads Up Seven Up because everyone was five minutes early to play . a team meeting.
“The team atmosphere was really great,” Dunn said. “Ultimately we are here to win football games but we have to have fun doing it and that means creating a competitive environment that will bring out the best in us and not just make us so tense about making mistakes.”
The public pressure on the team to win in 2019 made many of those graces for mistakes impossible. They were on a string of high-profile World Cup successes, from challenging a rising Japan in the 2011 final to winning it all in what almost felt like a charmed run in 2015 in Canada. The pressure created a bubble of incredible focus, a sense of collective. Not that they were all doing it all the time, but everyone seemed to be on the same page about what they were doing and why.
There was no room for error, especially when the team fought for equal pay and better treatment from US Soccer. And there’s nothing like sweating in the trenches of labor action next to someone, staring down the possibility of a lockout, to strengthen camaraderie.
The 2019 World Cup winners also bonded over their fight for equal pay. (Photo by James Devaney, GC Images)
The 2019 squad also benefited from loud leadership, driven mainly by the outspoken Rapinoe, but certainly shared by Morgan, Sauerbrunn and other players such as Ali Krieger, Kelley O’Hara and even the contrarian Carli Lloyd. This was a team that beat a drum everywhere they went – whether they meant to or not.
This new version is still figuring out which drum they want to hit and when. Now that the pay equity lawsuit has been properly resolved on this issue, they can put other priorities at the top of the list. Winning, of course, but also growth, innovation, adaptation, figuring out what the new pace of global development is, and even how to get ahead of that pace.
Dunn pointed out that the team’s approach to bringing in newer players has accelerated, something the crowded football calendar and increasingly earlier player development increasingly require.
“The biggest difference is you had to wait to get that first cap,” said Dunn, who first appeared with the USWNT in 2013. “That was the norm. Some of us were in camps for a whole year before we got more than two caps and that was kind of our process. And I think now you find yourself almost throwing these kids into the fire and seeing if they can survive, and I think that’s one way to do it too.
Horan, whose leadership style involves one-on-one conversations, said the team will rely on their younger players, who have already risen to the occasion. “New players, young players, the confidence is excellent,” she said. “I wish I had that when I was 18 when I joined this team, so (I’m) proud of them.”
If the younger players are nervous, they certainly don’t show it. Part of that is probably gaining enough club experience; Shaw, Rodman and Bethune are all high-profile players who carry a heavy tactical load at their NWSL clubs. That’s good for Hayes, who has shown a preference for fluid thinkers who can adapt positionally on the fly and press and defend from different formations over the course of a match.
Shaw and Rodman are also key parts of their NWSL teams (Photo by Todd Kirkland, Getty Images)
But behind the tactics lie the human connections that rely on trust. As Davidson put it in Colorado, “To feel like someone is supporting you, I think is so important in football, in any sport, especially when things get exciting. You turn to each other. You don’t turn to anyone else.”
Both the older and younger players seem happy that that trust is there. “I think we do a good job of connecting off the field and just being together,” Rodman said. “It’s not so much isolation. Obviously, we all find that time to be alone. But we have fun together. We also have that human aspect to it: sitting around and not talking about football, as difficult as that is.”
“We are coming together more than I have experienced in my time with this team,” said Sam Coffey, who received her first cap in 2022. “We have a clear philosophy about what we’re trying to do, who we are. trying to be who we want to be, both on and off the field. That culture is really determined and those points are made very clear by Emma and her employees.”
When Coffey was asked to define that philosophy, he objected to the tactical side of it, but off the field it ultimately came down to “putting the team before yourself.”
“It’s doing everything it can to help the team win,” Coffey said. “It puts the team, the winning culture and the success of the group above anything to do with the individual, and I am proud to play for a team like that. That’s how I want to be on the team.”
The team-first ethos isn’t new, but its implementation can be as varied as there are ways to score a goal. From the way players describe it, there is a renewed vigor in the camp, a sense of possibility and playfulness. The previous team was an autumn season, still vibrant and plentiful, but waning towards the end of a cycle. This team is spring renewed, waiting to see what comes from the seeds they planted, hoping for a glorious summer.
(Top photo: Stephen Nadler/Getty Images; Design: Dan Goldfarb)