This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Mike Sykes.
There isn’t a soul on earth right now who will tell you that the U.S. women’s national team is playing well right now.
Since its dominant opening showing against Vietnam, this team has looked pretty terrible. It fell behind early and trailed at the half for the first time in over a decade against the Netherlands. And today against Portugal, as everyone has pointed out, the post was the player of the match in a 0-0 tie.
Criticism is rightly coming from everywhere after this one. Especially from one Carli Lloyd, who once played for USWNT. She ripped the team for dancing and smiling and, basically, not being more angry after their tie against Portugal.
To be fair to Lloyd, she knows these players better than you or I ever would. She’s been in the system. She’s played with many of them and she knows their hearts and intentions for the most part.
With that being said, she took things a step too far when she tried to blame the USWNT’s poor performance on its work off the field.
In the postgame show with Alexi Lalas teeing her up, Lloyd brought up the team’s post-2020 fame as a reason why the team’s performance isn’t as sharp. She insinuated that some players might be “taking it for granted.”
“You put on that jersey and you want to give it everything you have for the people who came before you and the people who are going to come after you. And I’m just not seeing that passion. I’m seeing a very lackluster, uninspiring, taking it for granted. Where winning and training and doing all that you can to be the best possible individual player is not happening.”
These comments strike me as Lloyd being a bit too close to the team still. It sounds like a conversation the team would have in the locker room instead of the airwaves. It’d sound much better that way. Here, it just feels a bit off.
Yes, USWNT found new fame after winning a second consecutive World Cup. Of course, it did. That’s meant to be celebrated. By the way, the team used that new platform for so much good, which included the team’s fight against U.S. Soccer in an equal pay lawsuit. That’s objectively a good thing.
It feels even more ridiculous to call out things happening off the pitch when there’s just so much bad to choose from on it.
There’s a lack of creativity from this team that has just marred it down, as Jason Anderson from Pro Soccer Wire points out here. The attack strategy doesn’t vary at all. The substitutions in the game came extremely late and the team’s tactics remained easy to read.
Meanwhile, the U.S. had no answers for Portugal’s midfield. Portugal only put up six shots this game but possessed the ball for 56 percent of the match thanks to its varied attack and strong connections between the team’s players.
USWNT’s strategy felt like it was just “Let’s just get the ball to Sophia Smith and vibe out,” for a majority of the game. That’s just not going to cut it.
Look, I’m not a soccer expert by any means. I don’t know how to solve these problems. But I do know that complaining about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the game at hand certainly won’t help.
Quick Hits: Mama, there goes that man … Big trades are brewing in baseball … and more
— It’s wild how everyone made the same joke about Mark Jackson being let go by ESPN. Andrew Joseph has more. No idea what ESPN is doing over there but its NBA broadcast is going to be weird next year.
— Charles Curtis is following all of the big trade news coming from around the MLB. His poor, poor Mets.
—Nick Young hooped in some jorts. Do I really need to say more?
—Bryan Kalbrosky came up with an incredible stat that’s really going to help you bet well on the NBA next season.
Have a great day. Be kind to one another.
