It’s not a monopoly, not yet at least.
The United States have laid claim to successive Women’s World Cups, prying the 2015 trophy from Japan before doing away with Sarina Wiegman’s Netherlands in 2019.
The ultimate acid test, however, lies less than 70 days away. Should Alex Morgan and co. lay claim once more to the trophy that has become synonymous with them in the last decade, they’ll become the first team – men’s or women’s – to bring home three successive World Cup titles.
It’s the sort of ridiculous international football dominance that, for now, exists solely in the hypothetical, and arguably threatens to do so. The USWNT’s road to New Zealand and Australia has been ominous. Manager Vlatko Andonovski’s team suffered three successive losses for the first time since 1993, with World Cup rivals England, Germany and France getting the better of them.
The word ‘transition’ crops up when pundits contemplate preparations. Doubts eagerly swarm over whether the world champions can live up to the hype in a year that competition, particularly from Europe, has never been headier.
“It’s getting tight at the top,” surmises Heather O’Reilly, the former USWNT midfielder with three Olympic gold medals and a 2015 World Cup winners medal.
“The USA has to roll up its sleeves to continue to find those one, two, three, five percent differences between them and other opponents. Resources are levelling out now, coaching, sport science, video analysis. All those things that we had a leg up due to a lot of things like Title XI, winning early in ‘91 and winning breeds winning. These things snowballed for the US national team that would eventually get caught up to. Which is a great thing.
“But I do think we’re evolving as well, and I think they have a really good chance. No one on the men’s side or the women’s side has ever won three World Cups in a row, it’s never been done. A consecutive hat-trick of World Cups? What an incredible challenge.”
If there’s one thing O’Reilly craves, it’s a challenge. And while her national side prepare for theirs, the 38-year-old is gearing up for her own: the double at this year’s SoccerAid and a potential sixth on the bounce for World XI.
Last year, she and Cafu “had it going on the right side”, so much so that last year’s World XI coach Arsene Wenger felt compelled to coax the 37-year-old out of her two-year retirement and fulfil her dream of playing Champions League football, the one omission from her footballing CV.
That O’Reilly scored on her European debut – a winner against ZNK Pomurje in Slovenia – came as a shock to approximately no one. The surprise move to Ireland’s Shelbourne FC and subsequent success (she led Shelbourne to a successive women’s top-flight title) fit seamlessly into the Heather O’Reilly playbook: work hard, win big.
Wenger won’t coach O’Reilly’s second SoccerAid stint (that honour belongs to Robbie Keane and Martin Compston), and while he has yet to offer his words of his wisdom ahead, the American isn’t fretting. The former Arsenal manager reached out before her Champions League exploits. They have a bond famously forged in the Arsenal Training Centre salad bar line. “I can always harass his assistant to get him to come out,” O’Reilly quips, and one gathers the sense that the Frenchman wouldn’t mind.
Arguably more important, O’Reilly doesn’t explicitly rule out the possibility of another fantastic retirement U-turn off the back of this year’s SoccerAid performance. “Last year inspired a Champions League comeback; who knows what this performance will inspire?”
Despite offering up the tease with a conspiratorial glint, O’Reilly concedes the odds are phenomenal, even by her standards.
“I’m at that point in my life that I’ve done it career-wise,” O’Reilly admits, a statement so succinct and normal it risks undermining the teeming catalogue of laurels spanning her Wikipedia page.
“A lot of opportunities come up now that are just icing on the cake. And I feel a responsibility not just to represent myself but to represent women and to be a source of inspiration.
“And maybe [me being in SoccerAid] draws more people to be interested in the women’s game and if so, that’s great. I love this game, and I think I can still play and knock it.
“Whether I can do that six days a week at the highest level, that’s a question mark but I feel very fortunate to play in this event, that I still have my heart in this incredible sport and that my body still mostly cooperates.
“But at the end of the day, it’s about the kids and raising money for them. If I’m able to do that with my platform, that’s what it’s all about.”
It’s also, of course, about winning. O’Reilly is an uber-competitor’s worst nightmare. Preparation for this year’s competition includes training with the NWSL side North Carolina Courage’s under-23s as a player-coach, meaning O’Reilly’s sharpness will be two-fold at Old Trafford come June.
The preparations are in stark contrast to that which O’Reilly employed during her national and club career, going some way in explaining why O’Reilly believes the upcoming Women’s World Cup will rank as the best there’s ever been.
“I would be lucky if I drank a bottle of water a day,” she says with cheerful incredulity. “I look back now and I think how did I do that? I wasn’t eating well, wasn’t hydrated, not doing all of these things. The ability to better your game by these small percentages has certainly brought the level of the game forward.”
It also means the USWNT’s challenge of attaining unprecedented World Cup glory will coincide with their toughest test yet. The US has traditionally set the tenor and tone on the women’s stage, but O’Reilly notes that England, Germany, France and Spain all tout the sort of calibre, savvy and federation backing capable of knocking the US off their rock if the cards are played right.
Not that this has offset any of the usual confidence oozing from the USWNT camp. Star striker Alex Morgan has already claimed this year’s team is “the best” there’s been. The sentiment echoed that of defender Ali Krieger, who ignited a media storm in 2019 when she made the very claim ahead of the round of 16 clash with Spain.
A dangerous dance of arrogance or the necessary ethos of serial winners?
“The US generally doesn’t play the underdog card well,” O’Reilly admits with a smile. “That’s not our thing, that’s not our identity. With the USWNT, we’ve rarely been the underdog. We’ve been bred and trained to say to ourselves, yes this pressure is real, it’s a privilege. We are ranked No.1, we have these incredible standards of win or bust and saying those words are very scary because well, it’s a good opportunity to fail.
“I think it’s what separates the US from other teams throughout the past. Not a lot of athletes like that feeling, but we learned to have those incredibly high standards for yourself, you have to put yourself out there. You have to be exposed and strive for big things.”
It’s not difficult to see that ethos applied in O’Reilly’s own life. Her boots are technically hung up for now, but her ambitions are still doused in mettle. She admits she’s attempting to take a page out of Wenger’s book and keep those ambitions distilled.
“I find a lot of inspiration from Arsene because he stays focussed on his ambitions and his goals in the way that he stays true to some things. And I’m someone who thinks oh maybe this would be good, I’m all scatterbrained.”
But there’s an essence to O’Reilly in which succumbing to her impulses is her greatest strength. Her Champions League romp is surely testament, or her 35-yard humdinger against Columbia in the 2011 World Cup group stages.
For now, O’Reilly is focused on SoccerAid, smashing the fundraising record set last year, and completing her coaching badges. She’s currently coaching a male under-15s squad while working with the Courage.
She harbours ambitions to coach at the academy level, the dream being US Soccer’s youth teams and a potential crack at Europe once her family gets older.
O’Reilly doesn’t place a definitive end on her coaching ambitions there. Senior football exists, and she knows better than to place a ceiling on her impulses, particularly when those impulses reside in football.
Tickets for Soccer Aid For UNICEF on Sunday 11th June 2023, are still on sale via www.socceraid.org.uk/tickets with a family of four able to attend for just £60 – two adults and two children
