There are more questions surrounding the U.S. women’s national team heading into this World Cup than there have been in recent memory, but possibly the loudest concerns a player who is beloved, healthy, and set to start in a role she’s been playing for some time.
She’s widely seen as having done a great job there, but seemingly no one outside of the USWNT coaching staff wants to see Crystal Dunn playing left back. And yet, that’s exactly what just about every observer expects to see when the USWNT kicks off on Friday at Auckland’s Eden Park against Vietnam. Barring a last-second injury, you can write her name down in pen.
The discourse around how Dunn is deployed is nuanced and complicated, but there are some simple facts to establish: Dunn has played virtually every position since emerging as a big-time player for the University of North Carolina a decade ago, a situation that followed her into the pro ranks.
She won the 2015 NWSL MVP award after a blistering season as a forward (scoring 15 of the Washington Spirit’s 31 goals that season). A year later, after joining Chelsea, she spent much of her time as a wingback, an experiment that caught then-USWNT coach Jill Ellis’ eye. She won an NWSL title as an attacking midfielder with the North Carolina Courage, and at the moment, the Long Island native is having a potential NWSL Best 11 season as an attack-first two-way midfielder with the Portland Thorns.
Dunn has been open about wanting that midfield role with the national team, one that allows her to be a creative hub. Most notably, she spoke at length in a February profile in GQ about the burden that is being shuttled back and forth between two roles. There’s a soccer challenge involved there — even with the national team pushing its fullbacks up aggressively, the job is very different from her club role — as well as one that’s more personal.
No other USWNT regular in recent years has been asked to be such a radically different player when coming into the national team. Dunn and Emily Sonnett are the team’s two utility players, but Sonnett’s roles have all been defense-first.
Dunn, more than anyone else, has noticed this dichotomy. All indicators point to her, at least in practical terms, accepting the fact. Vlatko Andonovski has said that Dunn is welcome to compete as a midfielder, and Dunn has apparently never turned down the assignment. That said, it’s hard to believe that any player would feel entirely comfortable going to their national team and telling the coach that they’re only interested in playing certain positions.
Dunn’s fate heading into this World Cup was more or less sealed by Andonovski’s rather unorthodox 23-player roster. The attacking spots that Dunn is best suited for are overloaded: The USWNT squad includes three No. 10s, five wide forwards, and two No. 8s. The build of the roster has only increased the odds of something that already seemed pretty certain: like it or not, she’s going to be playing left back.
A problem Dunn has run into at the USWNT level is philosophical: For essentially its entire history, the U.S. has tilted towards the idea of getting its best 10 soccer players on the field in front of its best goalkeeper, and figuring it out from there.
Talent has trumped positional specificity, and while Dunn may be the only player asked to do massively different things when toggling between club and country, she’s not the only player on this team to be converted to a new position by a U.S. coach. Sofia Huerta was a chance-generating machine of an attacking midfielder in her early NWSL years before Ellis asked her to look into becoming a right back. Kelley O’Hara, once upon a time, was a three-time All-American forward for Stanford before being pushed wide, and then back, for the USWNT. Kristie Mewis, a former No. 10, had to become a box-to-box midfielder to climb back into contention.
When it comes to Dunn, the USWNT coaching staff is trying to sort through numerous options. Would they be a stronger team if she moved into the midfield and another left back came into the team at the expense of Lindsey Horan or Rose Lavelle? Could a formation change allow Dunn to move into the midfield while still getting the best out of the rest of the group? Or, is playing her at what is probably her fourth-strongest position, and one she endures more than enjoys, best for the group?
The answer they’ve landed on is that the best team they can put together will involve four defenders (including Dunn as a fullback), three central midfielders arrayed in some kind of triangle, a center forward, and two wide attackers. Andonovski’s only real move away from 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 has been a late-game 5-4-1 that is entirely about protecting leads.
A 4-4-2 diamond would get Dunn into a dynamite midfield with Horan, Lavelle, and Andi Sullivan or Julie Ertz, but the cost for that formation change would be someone like Trinity Rodman or Lynn Williams not starting to make room for the new left back, who again would not be on Dunn’s level. The fact that Dunn is the team’s best left back while also not being a left back works against her, even as it works for the team as a whole.
Interestingly, at the club level, Dunn plays for a Portland side that approaches this problem from the opposite perspective. Olivia Moultrie, Raquel Rodríguez, Christine Sinclair, and Hina Sugita are effectively vying for one spot in the Thorns’ midfield, while head coach Mike Norris has Dunn and Sam Coffey locked into the other two places in their 4-3-3. The Thorns make the bet that playing specialists in their best positions will have enough of a cohesive effect that it makes up for whatever is lost in raw talent.
Both schools of thought have had a lot of success, but the USWNT has been favoring pure ability over positional fit for a very long time, and internal cultures shift slowly.
It is fair to argue that Andonovski still had time to make a shift to use Dunn in midfield, and that he was slow to react to other issues as well. It took nearly all of 2022 to open the door to using a 4-2-3-1, for example, even as it was obvious that the team was leaving too big of a gap in central midfield to slow teams down in transition. Teams will have made bigger changes than the ones being discussed here heading into the World Cup.
However, the USWNT is not, and has never really been, something that can pivot on a dime. The same internal culture that drives the iron-willed competitive spirit and intensity that is this team’s hallmark is like trust: it’s easy to break, and takes forever to rebuild.
We may never know whether Andonovski had any designs on moving towards the Portland philosophy, but the moment to begin that push passed years ago. That has left him with the same conundrum that has dogged Dunn for six years now: The player pool is overflowing with attacking midfielders, wide forwards, and central midfielders that could start for a legitimate World Cup contender.
What that pool lacks is left backs of the caliber to force Andonovski to re-think a decision Ellis made more or less out of desperation in 2017. There is no left back version of Lavelle, or Ashley Sanchez, or Savannah DeMelo, other than Dunn. It is an unfair thing to place on her shoulders, but the USWNT has for some time now been in a position where they don’t have better choices.
However, if there’s a silver lining, it’s that the team can still get Dunn into spaces where her attacking skills can be devastating to opponents. The potential for highlight-reel moments still exists.
When the U.S. faces a low block, Dunn will move high and wide, and the team’s left back can function for a spell as a wide playmaker instead. Pressing Dunn along the touchline is like trying to tackle a ghost, and her eye for a dangerous attacking pass should invite plenty of combination play to enter the box from the left.
The other approach is maybe the best of the bunch. Dunn, with Portland, absolutely thrives in the half-space, setting up in the gap where no opposing defender or midfielder has total responsibility to confront her. It’s harder to access that space as a left back, but it’s not impossible.
Dunn providing an underlap is viable with the likely USWNT lineup, thanks to a few developments. Naomi Girma’s recovery speed at left-center back helps, as does the defensive ability Rodman and/or Williams can bring to the left forward position. Finally, Andonovski’s recent willingness to use a 4-2-3-1 against stronger teams means the U.S. can keep an appropriate defensive balance in place while using Horan to draw attention, opening up space for Dunn to get forward.
None of this will solve Dunn’s internal qualms about the position change, and it won’t satisfy a fanbase that wants to see possibly the most universally adored player in this country’s soccer history playing in a position where she feels the most joy.
It is, however, the best option the USWNT has right now.
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