The USWNT captain is one of three finalists for the prestigious award
Lindsey Horan has been rewarded for a standout season with Lyon, as the midfielder was named one of three finalists for the Division 1 Féminine player of the season award.
The U.S. women’s national team captain has netted six league goals for Lyon, which sits atop the table with an incredible record of 19 wins and one draw in 20 matches.
Lyon would have already locked up the title in previous seasons, but the French top flight will decide its champion this season in a knockout-style competition between the top four finishers in the league.
PSG, which is currently in second place, is the home to Horan’s two competitors for the individual prize. Tabitha Chawinga has a league-best 18 goals this term, while her teammate Grace Geyoro has chipped in with 11 goals of her own.
👑 @LindseyHoran est en lice pour le trophée de la 𝐌𝐞𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐞𝐮𝐬𝐞 de la saison de @D1Arkema !
Notre Américaine a brillé au milieu de terrain et a inscrit 6⃣ buts en 13 matchs. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/QeL5UB47SU
Coincidentally, PSG and Lyon are also battling it out for continental honors as the two French teams face off in the UEFA Women’s Champions League semifinal.
Lyon secured a 3-2 home win in the first leg last weekend, with the second leg set for Sunday at Parc des Princes.
Eva Gaetino highlighted USWNT captain Lindsey Horan as Lyon’s most important player ahead of Saturday’s semifinal
Eva Gaetino hasn’t gone up against Lindsey Horan all that often in her young career, but she’s seen enough of the U.S. women’s national team captain to be impressed.
Ahead of a UEFA Women’s Champions League semifinal between Gaetino’s Paris Saint-Germain and Horan’s Lyon, the 21-year-old highlighted the USWNT veteran as possibly the most important player in the tie.
In quotes published by Goal, Gaetino made it clear that she spent some of her first USWNT camp paying close attention to Horan, and praised the 29-year-old’s all-around game.
“I think even just being in camp with her and being on her team and seeing her strengths, she’s incredible on both sides of the ball,” explained Gaetino. “She’s very dynamic in the attack, very creative, and is also a very good defender. Having to face her higher up the field is exciting for me because I look up to her so much.”
Gaetino ‘excited’ to face Horan, Lyon
Despite going pro before finishing her collegiate eligibility and the big names on the PSG roster, the 5-foot-11 Gaetino has pushed her way into regular starts already. The former Notre Dame captain has started seven games for manager Jocelyn Prêcheur since arriving in the French capital.
That puts her in line to face Lyon in the biggest pair of games in PSG’s season. The Parisians will play the first leg at Lyon’s Groupama Stadium on Saturday, before hosting the second leg at the Parc des Princes on April 28.
Gaetino — who only signed with PSG earlier this year — indicated that she knows full well that PSG faces a really difficult task against Lyon, a perennial Champions League finalist and a side that has more often than not bested PSG in domestic play.
“They have world-class players and even in my [30] minutes against them previously, just the types of crosses that they were hitting and the runners and the timing of their headers, it’s a huge threat,” said Gaetino, whose professional debut came in Division 1 Féminine play against Lyon in February. “I think that’s going to be a huge challenge and I’m excited for it.”
The two USWNT leaders addressed the midfielder’s anti-LGBTQ+ social media activity
U.S. women’s national team pair Alex Morgan and Lindsey Horan made a brief statement to media on Wednesday addressing the ongoing controversy surrounding midfielder Korbin Albert.
Albert was forced to apologize last week after fans discovered that her TikTok account had either shared or reposted a host of anti-LGBTQ+ content. The 20-year-old also appeared to like an Instagram post celebrating Megan Rapinoe’s injury in last year’s NWSL championship game.
The midfielder was named to the SheBelieves Cup squad, with the USWNT set to play Japan on Saturday before facing either Brazil or Canada on Tuesday.
Albert’s presence has created a number of questions around how the USWNT would deal with the situation. In a brief statement, two of the team’s leaders said they were both saddened by her actions and that internal conversations among the team had taken place.
“Al and I just want to address the disappointing situation regarding Korbin that has unfolded over this past week,” Horan began.
“We’ve worked extremely hard to uphold the integrity of this national team through all of the generations and we are extremely, extremely sad that this standard was not upheld. Our fans and our supporters feel like this is a team that they can rally behind. And it’s so important that they feel and continue to feel undeniably heard and seen.”
Morgan continued: “We stand by maintaining a safe and respectful space, especially as allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community. And this platform has given us an opportunity to highlight causes that matter to us.
“It’s something that we never take for granted and we’ll keep using this platform to give attention to causes that are important to us. It’s also important to note we’ve had internal discussions around the situation, and that will stay within the team. But one thing also to know is that we have never shied away from hard conversations within this team.”
Neither Morgan nor Horan took questions about the situation. Mallory Swanson would later decline to answer a question, saying that the team would allow the statement from Morgan and Horan stand on its own.
U.S. women’s national team captain Lindsey Horan was one of 16 players named to the shortlist for the 2023 Best FIFA Women’s Player award.
The prize will be given for performances from August 1, 2022 through August 20, 2023.
Just like the Ballon d’Or, Spain star Aitana Bonmatí will be favored to take home the Best FIFA Women’s Player after winning a double with Barcelona and leading Spain to the World Cup title.
Alexia Putellas, Bonmatí’s teammate for club and country, has won both awards in back-to-back years.
While Sophia Smith made the 30-player shortlist for the Ballon d’Or, the USWNT and Portland Thorns star was not selected among the 16 finalists for the FIFA award. Instead, Horan was nominated after a strong World Cup with the USWNT and helping Lyon to a league title in 2022-23.
Here are all 16 players on the shortlist for the 2023 Best FIFA Women’s Player award.
Horan said the USWNT’s issues were due in part to how they were set up
Lindsey Horan has aimed some thinly veiled criticism at former U.S. women’s national team head coach Vlatko Andonovski and his staff, saying that part of the team’s World Cup failure came down to them not being set up to succeed.
The USWNT crashed out in the round of 16 for its worst World Cup finish ever, winning just one of four games at the tournament.
Andonovski stepped down last week in the aftermath of the World Cup, which followed a disappointing bronze medal finish at the Olympics in 2021 in his first major tournament as USWNT coach.
The coach was heavily criticized at the World Cup over various issues, but one of the common themes was the USWNT’s problems playing out of a 4-3-3 setup that saw them struggle to connect passing sequences.
The USWNT’s best performance of the tournament came in the round of 16 against Sweden, which saw the team switch to a 4-2-3-1 formation that resulted in much more control of the game. Ultimately, the U.S. couldn’t find the net and was eliminated on penalties after a 0-0 draw.
Appearing on The RE-CAP Show with ex-USWNT teammates Tobin Heath and Christen Press, USWNT captain Horan hinted that the changes for the Sweden game came from the players themselves — not the coaching staff.
“The game against Sweden, I don’t think we were necessarily set up to play the way that we played,” Horan said. “That was just us finally coming together and being like, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ And then it worked and then it’s like, ‘OK, keep doing it.’ Could that have happened earlier? Maybe. It’s a really tough one.”
AP Photo/Abbie Parr
Horan said in her role as captain, she tried to help out some of the younger players the USWNT needed to rely on in the tournament, including Sophia Smith.
After a double to open the tournament against Vietnam, Smith didn’t score in the team’s final three games. According to Horan, the reason Smith and some of the USWNT’s other young stars didn’t perform up to expectations was the way they were set up by the coaching staff.
“I made it a point to help Soph Smith as much as possible in this tournament because I think she has a lot of pressure on her back,” Horan said. “I want to make sure she’s in a good place and some of the younger players are in a really good place, because they’re going to have massive roles. And so it was like, could I have done more to help those players? Because I don’t think we got the absolute best out of some of them because of the way that we were set up, and some of the things that we did in the game.”
Horan added: “I [have been] killing myself for the last two weeks. Like what the heck could I have done to help or to push our playing style or to push this bravery? And at the end of the day, it’s like you’re set up in a structure to do this. And here’s your opportunity individually, like just go play within the structure.”
The USWNT finally played like themselves, but soccer can be cruel
Soccer has always been a cruel sport, and today it came calling for the U.S. women’s national team.
After three underwhelming performances in the group stage, the USWNT finally looked like themselves against Sweden, bossing one of the best teams in this World Cup.
Unfortunately, they found goalkeeper Zećira Mušović having one of the games of her life, and when she wasn’t making a big save, the errant finishing that has plagued this team appeared again, and the result was a penalty kick elimination after a scoreless 120 minutes.
It was a heartbreaker for the U.S., who missed a shot in the shootout that would have seen them advance, and then had to watch Sweden’s winning kick require a VAR check to reveal that the ball had crossed the line by a nearly imperceptible margin.
Still, when it comes to ratings, this was by some margin the best performance from the USWNT at this World Cup as a team, and for many players as individuals.
As a reminder, here’s the Pro Soccer Wire player rating scale:
Our scale:
1: Abysmal. Literally any member of our staff would have been been able to play at this level.
6: Adequate. This is our base score.
10: Transcendent, era-defining performance. This is Carli Lloyd vs. Japan in the 2015 final.
The now FOX Sports broadcaster then clarified her comments, saying she made them because she cares “deeply about this team.”
But, as ESPN reported Thursday from Auckland, New Zealand, Lloyd’s comments didn’t sit well with Horan, the USWNT current captain. Horan said the criticism was “frustrating for me to hear” because of how hard the team has worked.
“Again, it’s noise and, again, it’s an opinion and everyone is entitled to their own opinion — we know that’s how it goes,” Horan added. “But for me, I always want to defend my team and say: you have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes, you have no idea every single training what we’re doing individually, collectively, etcetera.
“So, for anyone to question our mentality hurts a little bit but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t really care. It’s what’s going inside of the team and getting ready for that next game.”
Advancing out of the group stage and into the knockout round, the USWNT opens the Round of 16 against Sweden on Sunday at 5 a.m. ET on FOX.
The USWNT captain admitted that her former teammates words were “frustrating to hear”
Lindsey Horan has admitted that hearing her former teammate Carli Lloyd questioning the U.S. women’s national team’s mentality “hurts a little bit.”
Lloyd made headlines in the aftermath of the USWNT’s 0-0 draw against Portugal to close out the World Cup group stage, offering a scathing assessment of the team’s state of mind.
“I’m just not seeing that passion,” Lloyd said on Fox. “I’m just 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.”
The USWNT legend’s comments have not gone down well with those around the program, with head coach Vlatko Andonovski saying they were “insane” and Midge Purce calling them “absolutely ludicrous.”
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, USWNT captain Horan wouldn’t go quite that far, but admitted that her ex-teammate’s words stung.
“It’s kind of frustrating for me to hear, especially knowing this team and knowing how much we put into every single game, how much preparation we put into every single game, seeing our trainings, seeing how hard we work,” Horan said in quotes published on ESPN.
The midfielder added: “Again, it’s noise and, again, it’s an opinion and everyone is entitled to their own opinion — we know that’s how it goes. But for me, I always want to defend my team and say: you have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes, you have no idea every single training what we’re doing individually, collectively, etcetera.
“So, for anyone to question our mentality hurts a little bit but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t really care. It’s what’s going inside of the team and getting ready for that next game.”
The U.S. women’s national team, by a margin of about three inches, survived a feisty Portugal side to get through to the knockout round of the World Cup.
That’s about all the good news there is to discuss. The USWNT were totally unable to solve the Portuguese midfield diamond throughout a troubling 0-0 draw, struggling for possession and also lacking chances to break out in transition.
The stats may show the USWNT holding a 17-6 shot advantage, and this is another game in which a U.S. opponent were held without a shot on goal. However, anyone that watched the match would be able to tell you that the Portuguese troubled the U.S. from start to finish, seeing the game’s best chance end with Ana Capeta hitting the post deep in stoppage time.
It was a dispiriting and disappointing showing in which no player really looked like they’d been given a platform to be their best. If the USWNT is to go on and make history as the first team to win three consecutive World Cups, this has to be by far their worst performance of the tournament.
Here’s a breakdown from a game in which no one looked particularly good.
As a reminder, here’s the Pro Soccer Wire player rating scale:
Our scale:
1: Abysmal. Literally any member of our staff would have been been able to play at this level.
6: Adequate. This is our base score.
10: Transcendent, era-defining performance. This is Carli Lloyd vs. Japan in the 2015 final.
The Dutch, on their first attempt at anything resembling an attacking foray, took a surprise early lead through Jill Roord on a sequence featuring four or five errors. That goal left the U.S. reeling, but just as importantly served to inspire the Oranje, who proceeded to threaten to run the USWNT off the pitch.
The U.S. managed to avoid letting the Netherlands turn their control into a ton of chances, and after a conflict between Lindsey Horan and Daniëlle van de Donk, flipped the tables. Horan scored seconds after that dispute was broken up, and as much as the USWNT showing drew criticism, the team will look back and wonder how their dominance of the game’s final half-hour didn’t result in a game-winning goal.
It was intense, breathless, controversial, and everything else people want out of high-level sports…except, if you’re a U.S. fan, it didn’t end with the expected three points.
Let’s dig into the most charged-up game of this World Cup thus far:
