The U.S. women’s national team will start something of a surprising lineup against Vietnam, with Vlatko Andonovski taking some chances in his team selection for their World Cup opener.
Andonovski named eight of the players who started the USWNT’s 2-0 send-off win over Wales as starters at Eden Park in Auckland as the U.S. opened up their slate of Group E matches.
Julie Ertz, Trinity Rodman, and Savannah DeMelo were the new additions, with Ertz rather surprisingly chosen at center back over projected starter Alana Cook.
Heavy rotation didn’t necessarily lead to answers for the USWNT
The U.S. women’s national team’s final match before naming their 2023 World Cup roster ended in a win, but may have left them with more questions than answers.
A 1-0 win over Ireland, courtesy of a 50-plus yard Alana Cook service floating into the back of the net, saw the USWNT keep goalkeeper Casey Murphy unbothered, but also saw them create few chances against a dogged opponent.
Vlatko Andonovski made six changes to the side that won the first meeting between the sides on Saturday, including a first-ever USWNT start for 18-year-old Alyssa Thompson (who was called in to replace the injured Mallory Swanson).
In its first appearance at the newly-opened CityPark, U.S. Soccer held a ceremony honoring St. Louis native Becky Sauerbrunn for passing the 200-cap milestone in 2022. Clearly they had more than that on their minds, as an early corner kick routine saw the veteran center back — who has never scored a USWNT goal — flashed into the area from nowhere.
Her free header had goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan beat, but it clipped the crossbar, allowing Ireland to escape.
— U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (@USWNT) April 11, 2023
From there, a half of few chances took hold, with Ireland playing the USWNT evenly. Thompson had the best moment to score, but opted to pass instead, with Sophia Smith ending up putting the ball into the stands.
However, the famed luck of the Irish completely vanished as the USWNT took the lead on an utterly bizarre 43rd minute goal. Cook looked to recycle the ball after a set piece, and she opted to float a long ball in for Lindsey Horan.
Cook over-hit her service, but it ended up being a perfect mistake: it eluded Horan, and Brosnan, and gave the OL Reign defender her first-ever USWNT goal (and on her birthday, no less).
Thompson nearly added a second as the USWNT got a rare moment to attack in transition, but Brosnan snagged the ball off her feet after some inspiration from Trinity Rodman and Ashley Sanchez opened the game up. Generally though, Ireland’s discipline playing out of a 5-4-1 formation again gave the U.S. plenty of difficult questions.
Ashley Hatch showed some strength in the 79th minute, holding a defender and attempting to scoop a shot on the turn over Bronson, but her effort landed on the roof of the net.
Ireland nearly sneaked a late equalizer not long afterward, with Kyra Carusa running onto Denise O’Sullivan’s through ball and poking a shot past Tierna Davidson that skipped a foot or so wide of Casey Murphy’s goal.
The USWNT got to simulate some game-specific moves they may well use at the World Cup, including a late-game move into a 5-4-1 of their own, but the lack of genuine chances left them needing to buckle down to secure the win, instead of already having the game in hand.
The duality of women’s soccer has rarely been laid out more plainly
Friday’s game between the U.S. women’s national team and England should be a wonderful occasion.
The defending World Cup champions and most decorated team in women’s soccer, playing the winners of Euro 2022, at a sold-out Wembley? Star players on both teams firing on all cylinders? As far as friendlies go, this should be as good as it gets.
And yet, this USWNT vs. England match — through no fault of the players that will play it — juxtaposes the wonderful heights the sport has reached against the hellish lows revealed in the findings of Sally Yates’ investigation into systemic abuse in the NWSL.
“The players are not doing well. We are horrified, and heartbroken, and frustrated, and exhausted, and really, really angry,” Sauerbrunn told reporters on Wednesday, before later adding a sad fact of life for USWNT players.
“Well, unfortunately, I would say that a lot of us have been navigating these sorts of things for a very long time,” said the veteran center back, who has seen the USWNT come through battles over playing conditions and equal pay. She’s also speaking from the perspective of someone who has truly been through it in NWSL, starting out with an FC Kansas City team that was moved over issues with both poor infrastructure and disgusting emails from an owner.
That team moved west and became the Utah Royals, who ceased to exist after owner Dell Loy Hansen walked away under intense pressure after reports of racist language and demeaning treatment of women players (something that came up again in the Yates report). Sauerbrunn moved to Portland, only to find a Thorns club that is undergoing a seismic shift after the investigation’s findings concerning their handling of Paul Riley.
It’s a theme that came up with every USWNT player who spoke in a press conference format heading into Friday’s showcase game. OL Reign defender Alana Cook, whose club hired Farid Benstiti even after he had been publicly accused of body shaming at Paris Saint-Germain, struck a similar chord to Sauerbrunn.
“I think as women, personally as a minority, this isn’t new,” said Cook. “I think these hostile conditions are kind of now being unearthed and properly revealed, but it’s things that we’ve been dealing with for the entirety of our careers.”
Megan Rapinoe, who also plays for the Reign, ruefully laughed while praising the USWNT’s ability to cope and still play at a high level.
“As sick as this sounds, I feel like we’re used to having to take on so much more than gameplan, tactics,” said Rapinoe. “I feel like we have an incredible ability to shoulder so much.”
Still, Rapinoe on multiple occasions circled back to the positive of the current circumstances. Wembley, one of the world’s genuine soccer shrines, is going to be packed with fans to watch two of the brightest lights in the game. It’s rare, and it has incredible value, and it’s what these players actually deserve.
(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
“This is an incredible game, an incredible moment that actually, I think, sits kind of nicely with this horrific thing,” explained Rapinoe. “The players have pushed (women’s soccer) to this point, where it’s a sellout, 90,000-plus at Wembley. Off another team fighting for respect in their country and fighting for the right treatment, having an incredible run and being able to galvanize their fans in the country behind them, and feeling like this is a special moment for us to all come together and celebrate women’s football for all of the good that it is.”
Women’s soccer has seemingly always been in a balancing act, carrying amazing feats in one hand and damaging, unfair treatment in the other. The last NWSL champions pushed through a run for the ages while also successfully demanding ownership change at the Washington Spirit, and rather than being a one-off, it feels like the history of women’s soccer played out by one team as a metaphor.
This friendly is a glimpse at what women’s soccer could be all the time, in so many more places. It’s a north star shining through some extraordinarily bleak circumstances, and hopefully it can help guide the sport to better times. If people with authority could simply bring themselves to care about providing a safe, fair environment, this kind of occasion wouldn’t be such a rarity.
“There’s a reason that we’re at Wembley right now, there’s a reason that there’s 90,000 people coming, there’s a reason that these two particular teams have stretched way past the field and done something really special,” said Rapinoe. “I feel like this is a really special moment in women’s football. I know it’s just a friendly, but it does mean more than that.”
All of that is true, and Rapinoe is right to remain defiant when it comes to protecting that joy and that sense of accomplishment. It just also lives in the same space as the trauma that hovers over seemingly every team, no matter how successful they are.
Cook put it very succinctly on Wednesday. “I think we have such a momentous occasion on Friday playing at a sold out Wembley Stadium. And it’s marred by this report, and it’s marred by the atrocities that have been condoned and tolerated and allowed to go on in the NWSL for the last 10 years.”
Let’s hope these massive days don’t keep being marred by the kinds of people that have brought so much pain to women’s soccer.
Cook surely felt winning the Shield was well worth her $10 payment
OL Reign won the NWSL Shield on Saturday, but not without a little help from Gotham FC.
The Portland Thorns were looking good to clinch the Shield, awarded for the best NWSL regular-season record, when last-place Gotham came up with an unlikely late comeback to turn a two-goal deficit into a 3-3 draw on the season’s final day.
The draw snapped a league-record 12-game losing streak and handed OL Reign a chance to swipe the Shield away from their Northwest rivals if they could defeat the Orlando Pride later in the evening.
The Reign emphatically did just that, winning 3-0 to clinch the third NWSL Shield in club history and first since 2015.
Seeing that OL Reign would not have clinched the Shield without some help from her team, Gotham star Midge Purce felt the least she could do is request a $10 payment from her USWNT teammate and Reign defender Alana Cook for “facilitating championship win.”
Cook duly obliged.
By clinching the Shield and the top overall seed in the playoffs, OL Reign locked down a NWSL semifinal at Lumen Field on October 23. They will face the winner of the quarterfinal between the Houston Dash and Kansas City Current match, which takes place on October 16.
On the other side of the bracket, the Thorns clinched a first-round bye by finishing second, and will host the winner of the quarterfinal between the San Diego Wave and Chicago Red Stars.
