The U.S. women’s national team’s SheBelieves Cup squad is intentionally crafted to give more green players some experience, but that doesn’t mean the roles that have been essentially automatic to some of the program’s most storied players are guaranteed to be there after the competition.
That was the underlying message from manager Vlatko Andonovski on Thursday upon revealing his 23-player squad for games against Czech Republic, New Zealand and Iceland later this month. Andonovski wasn’t speaking in pointed or threatening terms by any means, but his matter-of-fact tone when addressing a squad that doesn’t include the likes of Alex Morgan, Christen Press, Tobin Heath and Megan Rapinoe is a bit of a departure from what has become customary for the USWNT.
"It doesn’t mean that all these players that have done in the past are just going to come back in the next camp because they’ve done well a year ago and two years ago," Andonovski said. "They need to perform, they need to play in their [NWSL] markets, they need to play well in their markets and show they can still be valuable for the national team."
