The U.S. women’s national team hadn’t trailed in a World Cup match since 2011, but that quickly changed in Wednesday’s Group E matchup against the Netherlands.
In a rematch of the 2019 final, the USWNT fell behind after allowing a 17th-minute goal to Jill Roord. Yet, the hero from that 2019 final — Rose Lavelle — wasn’t even on the field at the time.
As the USWNT went down a goal in the match, fans desperately called for Lavelle to get subbed into the game. Lavelle was available for the match and made appearance in the Group E opener against Vietnam. But head coach Vlatko Andonovski had been skeptical about Lavelle’s readiness to play 90 minutes.
The reason: Lavelle injured her knee in the April 8 friendly against Ireland. And though the injury wasn’t seen as a longterm issue (unlike Mallory Swanson’s patella tear in the same game), Lavelle went three months without appearing for the USWNT. She trained with the squad and was able to make the World Cup roster, but as Andonovski said earlier, she’s not a 90-minute player yet.
The U.S. women’s national team has named an unchanged lineup for its attention-grabbing World Cup clash with the Netherlands.
The pairing, a rematch of the 2019 final, had been eagerly anticipated since the draw placed both sides in Group E, and Vlatko Andonovski has decided to make no alterations to a side that opened the 2023 edition with a 3-0 win over Vietnam.
That means no starting role for Rose Lavelle, despite speculation ramping up that the star attacking midfielder would get the nod after she appeared in the team’s pre-game press conference. Lavelle scored a triumphant goal against the Dutch in the 2019 final, and has been working her way back from a knee injury for months. The OL Reign playmaker played 27 minutes in the USWNT’s opener.
Per U.S. Soccer, all 23 players in the squad remain available, meaning that the USWNT has not picked up any knocks in training or that may have materialized during a physical battle with Vietnam. Striker and co-captain Alex Morgan acknowledged that the U.S. was not “always clicking” in that match, but Andonovski apparently saw enough positives to retain the exact same starting lineup to take on the Oranje.
Netherlands lineup (3-5-2): Daphne van Domselaar; Sherida Spitse, Stefanie van der Gragt, Dominique Janssen; Victoria Pelova, Daniëlle van de Donk, Jackie Groenen, Jill Roord, Esmee Brugts; Katja Snoeijs, Lieke Martens
Smith was at the center of most of the USWNT’s best in their win
It may not have been the blowout some expected, but the U.S. women’s national team started the World Cup off with a 3-0 win over Vietnam.
A first-half brace from Sophia Smith — one goal was clinical, the other needed a fairly hefty slice of luck — set the USWNT on their way. After some missed chances, including an Alex Morgan penalty kick that was saved by Vietnam’s Tran Thi Kim Thanh, Lindsey Horan added the third on an assist from Smith.
In the context of Vietnam’s recent results, including only falling to Germany 2-1, it’s a decent result. It’s also not the rout that fans may have thought was coming, though on another day the goals may have been flowing with just a touch more sharpness from the attacking players.
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 USWNT pair are both working their way back from injury
U.S. women’s national team head coach Vlatko Andonovski has said Rose Lavelle and Megan Rapinoe will both begin the World Cup on minutes restrictions as they ease back following injuries.
The news was better on Julie Ertz, though, with the coach saying the midfielder is at 100 percent and has no restrictions.
None of the trio played in the team’s send-off match against Wales earlier this month.
Lavelle has been battling a knee injury that has sidelined her since April, while Rapinoe hasn’t played since she left OL Reign’s game against Kansas City on June 10 with a calf issue.
Ertz, meanwhile, has been battling a thigh issue at various points in the past two months.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of his team’s World Cup opener against Vietnam, Andonovski said that both Rapinoe and Lavelle would be eased into action as the tournament progresses.
“Rose actually has been really good, she’s trained with the team now for a good three weeks, and off and on she trained with us before that,” Andonovski said. “She’s ready to play and we’re not going to force a lot of minutes from the beginning. We’ll ease everything up as we move on.”
Andonovski added: “From minutes management, Julie is 100% where Megan is in the same boat like Rose. Her minutes are probably going to grow as the tournament goes by.”
With Lavelle sidelined, Ashley Sanchez appears a likely candidate to start against Vietnam. Newcomer Savannah DeMelo is also an option for the USWNT at the No. 10 position.
Rapinoe, meanwhile, is expected to be used as a bench option for the USWNT even if fully fit, with Trinity Rodman, Alyssa Thompson and Lynn Williams potential starters at wide forward with Sophia Smith a lock starter on the other side.
With the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup set to begin July 20, the USWNT roster was announced Wednesday and it included a former Badger.
With the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup set to begin July 20, the USWNT roster was announced Wednesday and it included a former Wisconsin Badger midfielder. A member of the Badger women’s soccer team from 2013-2016, Rose Lavelle will appear in her second World Cup.
The 5-foot-4 athlete was a superstar for the United States women’s national soccer team during the 2019 World Cup, winning the Bronze Ball as the third-best player in the tournament.
This comes as no surprise though after her successful career with Wisconsin, after she won many awards with the Badgers. These include the 2013 Big Ten Freshman of the Year award, her being named a 2015 MAC Hermann Trophy semifinalist and Lavelle being selected for an All-American team each year from 2014-2016.
Lavelle went on to be selected first overall in the 2017 NWSL Draft by the Boston Breakers and she is one of the very best soccer players in the world, let alone country.
Both OL Reign players appear close to returning from injury
Heading into Wednesday’s World Cup roster announcement, Megan Rapinoe and Rose Lavelle were two of the biggest question marks for the U.S. women’s national team.
Lavelle has been battling a knee injury that has sidelined her since April, while Rapinoe had to leave OL Reign’s game against Kansas City on June 10 with a calf issue.
Thankfully for the USWNT, both players were included on the World Cup roster as they look to help the team secure an unprecedented third straight title.
Speaking to reporters after naming his roster, USWNT coach Vlatko Andonovski offered positive updates on the OL Reign duo, saying he expects both of them to take part in the send-off match against Wales on July 9.
“The situation with Rose Lavelle right now is not something that we’re worried about,” Andonovski said. “We expect Rose to have minutes in our send-off game and then we’ll move on from there and manage the minutes accordingly.”
The coach added that if Lavelle isn’t able to play, he feels comfortable with the other two options on the roster at her position.
“We’re happy with the players that we have in that position, which is Ashley Sanchez and [Savannah] DeMelo. If needed at certain points of a game or in certain games, we feel comfortable with them stepping in.”
The coach said Rapinoe will play a different role this year than during her Golden Ball-winning 2019 World Cup, but he expects her to be healthy for the tournament in Australia and New Zealand.
“Megan Rapinoe is probably going to have a different role than the previous two World Cups,” Andonovski said. “She certainly is going to have different types of minutes, but her role first from a leadership standpoint is so important, but also her performance on the field. When she is on the field she is very valuable for us.
“She’s progressing well from her injury and she’s another one that is expected to have minutes in the send-off game.”
Get all the latest Nike gear ahead of the tournament
The United States women’s national team is eyeing up another World Cup title.
The four-time world champs are looking to defend their 2019 World Cup title, which was earned when the USWNT topped the Netherlands in the final in France.
It may be time for USWNT fans to get a little nervous
If you are a U.S. women’s national team fan, it may be time to start worrying about Rose Lavelle’s injury.
Lavelle was injured in the USWNT friendly against Ireland on April 8, and hasn’t played since.
At the time, USWNT head coach Vlatko Andonovski called the injury “a little knock” and said of his decision to hold Lavelle out of the team’s second match against Ireland: “This is not a game for us to take any chances.”
But more than six weeks later, Lavelle has yet to return to the pitch. The full extent of the issue is not known, though OL Reign head coach Laura Harvey has confirmed it is a knee injury.
Harvey said in late April that she expected Lavelle back in “a couple more weeks” but this week, she confirmed the midfield playmaker had suffered a setback.
Head coach Laura Harvey says "it changes all the time" and right now she really has no idea if we'll see Lavelle play #NWSL before the World Cup.
The CBA releases all national team players, including #USWNT, to their federations on June 26th for the World Cup FIFA window.
— Bella Valeriano Munson (@munson_bella) May 24, 2023
Lavelle has made just two appearances for OL Reign this year, in addition to four appearances with the USWNT.
Her setback comes amid two months of difficult injury news for the USWNT, as Mallory Swanson and Catarina Macario will both miss the 2023 World Cup with knee injuries. Lavelle’s own knee injury, then, will be a further headache for Andonovski as he aims to guide the U.S. to a third consecutive World Cup title.
The NWSL is set to be part of the hugely popular video game for the first time
EA Sports has revealed the 10 highest rated NWSL players in FIFA 23, as the league’s teams are available in the game for the first time ever.
San Diego Wave star Alex Morgan leads the list with a rating of 90, while Debinha — who signed with the Kansas City Current in a huge free agent deal this offseason — is next up, rated 88 overall.
U.S. women’s national team starters Sophia Smith (Portland Thorns), Mallory Swanson (Chicago Red Stars), and Rose Lavelle (OL Reign) are next on the list, all given an 87 rating.
EA Sports has announced all of the player ratings across the NWSL, which can be found along with their ratings for women’s players in the Women’s Super League, Division 1 Féminine, and prominent national teams like Spain and Germany. The full list of women’s player ratings can be found here.
Following a landmark partnership between the league, the NWSL Players’ Association, and EA Sports, FIFA 23 will include NWSL players starting on March 15 in the following modes:
Kick Off
Tournament Mode
Head to Head season
Co-op Seasons
Online Friendlies
FIFA 23 will also include four NWSL stadiums, authentic kit renderings, and celebrations.
Here are the top 10 — or really 11, due to a three-way tie for ninth place — NWSL players in FIFA 23.
Swanson and the counter-press? Great! Facing a high press? Not so much
At the moment, the U.S. women’s national team is a cliché glass of water.
If you see a team that has now won six straight games and just beat three strong sides in Canada, Japan, and Brazil en route to yet another SheBelieves Cup title, you’re looking at a half-full glass. They have a key player in extraordinary form, injured regulars are approaching full fitness, and they gave up just one goal in what is effectively a preseason tournament while facing sides whose players are in many cases closer to 100%.
If you’re thinking that Canada was a shadow of itself due to off-field issues with its federation, or that Japan worried the USWNT throughout their match, or are picturing Brazil’s near-misses from Kerolin or Adriana, you’re Team Half-Empty. You saw the USWNT struggle with two very different pressing set-ups, and are expecting things to go awry in the first game where the U.S. doesn’t bury their first great look at goal.
Well friends, guess what? You’re both making great points. Let’s get into the positives and negatives of the USWNT’s showing at the SheBelieves Cup.
Swanson’s show
Mallory Swanson is unstoppable at the moment, scoring in all three SheBelieves Cup matches for the USWNT and in seven straight games overall. The list of attacking players anywhere sharing this sort of stratospheric form consists of maybe Sam Kerr, and that’s it.
Under Vlatko Andonovski, there was a Christen Press phase before the pandemic like this, and Catarina Macario and Sophia Smith have spent time as the seemingly inevitable source of goals and assists on this team. Swanson is indisputably having her time under the spotlight right now.
One remarkable thing about this run is that it’s not happening with a particularly stable attacking group around her. The following is a list of what other attacking players were on the field when Swanson scored on this run:
Morgan, Smith, Lavelle
Morgan, Rodman, Lavelle
Hatch, Rodman, Sanchez
Morgan, Williams, Sanchez
Morgan, Rodman, Sanchez
Morgan, Williams, Lavelle
With Smith absent for both camps this year due to a foot injury, and Rose Lavelle missing two SheBelieves Cup games for precautionary reasons, Vlatko Andonovski has toggled between plenty of groups on offense, and Swanson seems to work just as well alongside any of them. We also saw Swanson look very comfortable playing off of Macario in 2021 and the early part of 2022, leaving little worry if the USWNT ends up going back to more of a false No. 9 look come the World Cup.
What’s been very impressive from Swanson is that she’s using her off-ball movement to create the kinds of chances she thrives in: running a channel, receiving the ball just as she breaks in behind the defense. Teams know the USWNT is looking for it. Right-sided defensive players know that’s where she’s going to end up, and still — whether in counter-pressing moments, long balls from the back, passes from midfield, or combination play — they can’t stop her from getting there anyway.
In the months ahead, any team that’s serious about winning the World Cup or that finds itself in Group E is going to be intently studying how to either prevent Swanson from finding these openings, or to cut off her supply from the rest of the group.
It’s vital for the USWNT that they keep opponents guessing, because at the moment, this doesn’t seem like a team that is going to imperiously march through seven games to a trophy. Much like these last two games in particular, the USWNT is on course for some very tight knockout round games in which one player being decisive is the difference.
The good news? The roster is deep with that kind of player, and Swanson in particular is arguably the decisive player in women’s soccer right now. If the team can maintain that — and especially if they add to it — their chances of a third straight World Cup victory are stronger than people seem to think right now.
Pressing problems
That said, there is a reason your social media timeline of choice seems full of doubt. It boils down to some clear issues the USWNT has had facing a high press. To be fair, any organized high press attempted by fast players is by its nature difficult to play through. To their credit, the USWNT has used friendlies to actually work on this rather than simply playing it safe in hopes of an exhibition victory.
However, it’s fair to say this is very much a work in progress, and come the World Cup, we may see them have to adopt some safety-first tactics to get through the opening stages of games. Generally speaking, that’s how high-pressing teams operate: you press for 15-20 minutes trying to get a lead or at least throw your opponent into disarray, then spend some time defending out of a more defined block so you don’t have a team full of exhausted players.
The USWNT, after simply overwhelming a Canada side that had been through so much coming into game one, found themselves on the other side of the coin against both Japan and Brazil. These games weren’t equal — Japan’s press was more organized and dangerous, whereas a tired-looking U.S. gave Brazil an assist by offering up some uncharacteristically sloppy play — but the outcome was close enough to the same that it should be a concern.
(AP Photo/Mark Zaleski)
We’ve seen some other top teams unsettle the USWNT like this over the past few years. Sweden did it at the Olympics, and both Germany and Spain showed that they were paying attention to the trend late in 2022.
As was already covered here, to some extent any press that is executed at a reasonable level is going to make the team in possession look uncomfortable. There seems to be an expectation among fans that can’t be reconciled: many teams are improving worldwide and deserve more respect, but also, the USWNT should be able to beat anyone anywhere with ease, so that discomfort must be an indicator that the team is falling off a cliff.
The sky is not falling for the USWNT, who as a reminder just beat three higher-end teams despite fielding a squad that is (Lindsey Horan aside) in preseason. But it is time for the fanbase to come to grips with a reality that, as high-pressing tactics have become more and more a regular thing in the women’s game, USWNT games might look a little rough around the edges.
It also must be said that the USWNT showed its preseason status in these two games. Some fundamental elements — first touch, body shape when receiving the ball, how often they checked their shoulders, and how early they made their move to be an option for the next pass — were lacking. By contrast, Japan and Brazil both seemed to be closer to top gear. That shouldn’t be the case at the World Cup.
However, here’s where the worried USWNT fan might want to start looking when they consider issues with the team: in this tournament, both Japan and Brazil pressed the way you’d expect them to. Japan’s 3-4-2-1 is not an unknown quantity, and Pia Sundhage’s 4-4-2 with Brazil is something everyone should be very familiar with by now.
Why, then, did these pressing structures seem to come as such a surprise? It’s one thing to enter a game knowing that it’ll be a bit scruffy because both teams are pressing. It’s another to see the USWNT seemingly not prepared to find the angles needed to play around those differing shapes. Every press gives up openings to gain certain things, but the U.S. had to find those spaces rather than knowing where they would be from the jump.
Japan and Brazil both seemed to catch the USWNT off guard, and while the players and coaching staff both did solid work sorting things out on the fly, it’s a bit alarming that they were having to find their way mid-game, and that’s not a completely new issue. Last year’s three-game losing streak saw a similar dynamic play out.
The pressure right now on the coaching staff should be on making sure more games resemble the Canada match rather than a worrisome scramble to get through the first 20 minutes without conceding. Higher-end teams are no longer going to hold off on taking the big tactical risk pressing is against the USWNT, and as we saw last year, there are teams out there good enough to turn a worrying phase for the USWNT into actual goals.
Pressing solutions
The flip side to the USWNT’s issues when facing a press is that they remain an absolute nightmare of a counter-pressing team. That’s down to both the work of the coaching staff — Andonovski’s teams, going back to FC Kansas City and the former Seattle Reign, have largely been counter-pressing experts — and the individual players.
Swanson’s goal came from counter-pressure that ended with Lynn Williams forcing a turnover and getting the ball to Lavelle in space. The USWNT counter-pressed Brazil into a giveaway on Alex Morgan’s goal that wasn’t (a shame, since Andi Sullivan’s first-time through ball was the best pass either team played on Wednesday), and seized on another chaotic situation when Morgan scored a goal that actually counted a few moments later.
Williams is comfortably the best counter-pressing forward on the planet, and last month we were talking about how strong her claim is for a World Cup roster spot despite losing 2022 to injury. This is ultimately why the talk about her not being the most clinical finisher has always missed the point: the USWNT will score more goals with her in games, because they’ll get more chances, because no team and no individual is better at counter-pressing.
It’s not just Williams, though. Anyone who has watched Trinity Rodman in NWSL has seen her — even in mid-block systems, which the Washington Spirit have largely played during her first two seasons — force turnovers by combining a clear understanding of when to jump on an opposing player with her obvious athletic gifts. Rodman’s ability on that front already seems top-tier, and we’ve only really seen the tip of the iceberg. In Mark Parsons’ system this year — expect more high pressure and more counter-pressing — she’s going to improve rapidly.
Swanson and Smith may not force as many turnovers, but they’re both vital cogs in this machine due to how quickly they choose and make the correct run after the turnover comes. Going back to Swanson always managing to get stereotypical Swanson chances even though every opponent wants to prevent them, this is often where they come from. She (and Smith) see the turnover coming, and make the most dangerous run early. The USWNT player picking up the loose ball doesn’t have to cycle through options or take an extra touch to wait for the opening. The ball pops loose, and the pass in behind to a world-class attacker is already on.
Probably not a game that will be known for its attacking brilliance, but w/ USA only getting off 5 shots to Japan's 15, the chances that USA had *on average* were far better than the opponent.
The Japan game was a perfect example. Japan’s expected goals were higher, as even a casual viewer would have guessed. However, since they also out-shot the USWNT by nine, their xG per shot was quite low. The USWNT didn’t create a lot, but the chances they carved out were good ones, and with their forwards, the higher xG chances tend to become actual goals.
All of this is to say that counter-pressing, and the avenue towards higher-leverage openings, is how the USWNT has been winning games that seem more even on a surface level. They put teams into terrible positions just when they believe they’ve dealt with the threat and start to open up their shape, and they have a range of forwards and midfielders (it must be mentioned that Lavelle is more or less an ideal No. 10 to receive the ball in a counter-pressing situation) built to thrive in exactly these moments.
More than any other thing, this is the path towards a USWNT World Cup win this summer.
