It’s safe to say the U.S. women’s national team has not impressed anyone at this World Cup.
To be fair, things could be worse. Germany and Brazil have already packed their bags, as have the the defending Olympic champions Canada. Australia and Norway had to get their respective acts together to vault themselves into advancement at the last gasp, and a global power like Spain has suffered a 4-0 loss. It’s been wild.
None of that excuses the performances of the U.S. though, which have been extraordinarily frustrating. Setting Canada aside, all of the teams listed above also have had at least one good game at this tournament, a showing that most would agree deserved a grade better than a C-plus. The USWNT can’t say that.
Much of the discussion has centered on lineup choices and substitutions. Should Lynn Williams be in there? What about moving Julie Ertz back into the midfield? People want to see Sophia Smith playing centrally, they want a team that brought three different No. 10s to somehow find playing time for all of them, and on and on.
Pro Soccer Wire has good news, and bad news. We’ll start with the bad: none of these popular talking points would impact much of anything, save possibly disrupting the one bold choice (Ertz partnering Naomi Girma) that has paid off. Putting your fave into the next game isn’t going to save the day.
Why? Putting it bluntly, the USWNT’s tactical approach has mitigated so much of what these players are all good at doing. Swapping starters isn’t going to solve that, because the new player coming in will run into the exact same problem. On The Re-Cap Show, USWNT great Christen Press said it better than anyone: “Every single player, in every single line, is not being set up to succeed.”
When a coaching staff is doing that, shuffling the personnel is rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship. The problems with this USWNT, other than one aspect that we’ll get to at the end, are on a whiteboard, a PowerPoint presentation, and so on. They’re taking the field with a plan that leads them in the wrong direction.
With a round-of-16 match against Sweden (possibly the single team most familiar with how to slow them down on the planet), showing up with the same plan is asking to be sent home ASAP.
Here are some achievable changes that can give the USWNT a real shot at turning this World Cup around.