The ninth edition of the Women’s World Cup has been an axiomatic affair, evincing the marked growth of women’s football throughout the world. The competition has been fierce. The newcomers have contended. The heavyweights held off, while presumed underdogs shine. Two juggernauts of the knockout rounds have been knocked off-kilter in the group stage; Canada were cast aside by ascendant Matildas and Brazil guarded from glory by Jamaica’s Reggae Girlz.
In the shake-up, headlining the melee, are the four-time world champions looking fallen from grace. After a 3-0 victory over debutantes Vietnam, USA drew with the Netherlands 1-1 in a shaky rematch of the 2019 final, then scraped by against the newcomers Portugal 0-0, the grace of a goalpost keeping their sheet somehow clean.
Given the times, a surface-level observation could surmise USA stumbled through Group E simply because of increased parity in the game. Indisputably, that’s part of the case. To reduce not just this World Cup performance but the two years preceding it to the world racing forward shrouds the festering issues of the team stagnating.
The most glaring is the management. Since taking charge in 2019, Vlatko Andonovski has rarely, if ever, had this team working tough opposition with a clear identity or dominant form. USA did reasonably well at the SheBelieves Cup this February, defeating Canada 2-0 (during Canada’s fresh labour disputes with their federation), Japan 1-0 and Brazil 2-1 on home soil. But when faced with elite talent on neutral or foreign turf (at the Olympics in Tokyo, at Wembley last October, in Pamplona the following week) USA have fallen short.
The attack has seemed rudderless, the midfield ill-equipped. With ample time to do so, at this point there’s been no ability to adapt. As testament to the clear talent of the player pool, there have been moments of real brilliance. But they arrive on the backs of individuals, rather than any repeatable plan.
Undoubtedly, there are events out of Andonovski’s hands wreaking havoc on this team’s chances. Those events, though, are not unique to the USWNT, because injuries have haunted nearly every team in contention. Still, the loss of Catarina Macario’s creative flair and goal-conjuring calibre haunts the hopeful soul.
Mallory Swanson was in the form of her life, breaking records for fun in the annals of USA Soccer history with an attack built entirely around her, when she went down in April with a patella tendon tear. The unclear fitness of players such as Julie Ertz or Rose Lavelle left vagaries in an opaque lineup. Finally, Becky Sauerbrunn, the unflappable veteran centre-back, was ruled out at the last minute with a foot injury that threw a domino effect of haphazard changes into the World Cup air.
Even so, the team have repeatedly failed to account for the tactical approaches of the opposition, running out either without a plan or without knowing how to use it. The press has been circumvented, the midfield picked apart, they seem to not know about width. Substitution decisions (or reluctance to use them) have boggled the mind. Those are patterns that supersede the misfortunes of injuries.
But the problems of programmatic stagnation expand beyond Andonovski and may outlive his reign. A clear regression in success at the youth national team level portends a gap in talent production that will only grow. Coaching itself may well be an issue, starting at the youth levels and moving up. USA have time to turn this around. They do have the talent to pull it off. It’s the putting it together that’s the problem.
After Sweden’s 2-0 defeat of Argentina on Wednesday in New Zealand, USA will meet them next in the last 16 in Melbourne. When they do, they’ll do so with the renewed pressure of a clamouring public dismayed by their stuttering start. It has long been true they play best when angry, when motivated, when proving a point.
Sweden will challenge them tactically, be vicious with their press and provide little space for error. They wil be threatening from set pieces and corners. They’ll look to dominate USA in midfield … again. The last time USA and Sweden met, it was a horrid Olympics performance USA lost 3-0. That was, in many ways, the first siren sound of Andonovski’s tenure. He and his team were out of their depth. It was the first sign that the dominant era of 2019 was no longer. On Sunday, at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, Andonovski has a chance to show the team can evolve and prove us wrong.
Recommended viewing
France beat Panama in a 6-3 thriller, featuring a goal of the tournament contender from the minnows’ Marta Cox.
¡Revive nuestro primer gol en un Mundial!🔥
— FEPAFUT (@fepafut) August 2, 2023
Así fue el golazo de tiro libre de Marta Cox 🆚 Francia🇫🇷.
Un gol que significa nuestra primera anotación en la historia en una Copa del Mundo🏆.
¡Para verlo una y otra vez!
📽️@deportes_rpc #TodosYTodasSomosPanamá pic.twitter.com/X8FMyALdWr
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