The U.S. women’s national team seems set to truly lean on Ashley Sanchez for the first time, and an offseason evolution means the playmaker is ready for the occasion.
In some ways, this moment has been a long time coming: Sanchez starred at the youth national team level, received her first USWNT call-up at just 17 years old, and led a national title contender in assists as a college freshman at UCLA. Upon joining the Washington Spirit, she claimed NWSL’s Future Legend award in 2020, a stand-in for Rookie of the Year after that season was significantly curtailed by the pandemic.
The California native’s trajectory has always pointed towards a place on the world stage with the USWNT.
That leads to the 2023 World Cup, and an interesting sort of pressure. With Rose Lavelle’s fitness still a major question, the nation will tune in to the USWNT’s Group E opener against Vietnam and in all likelihood, Sanchez will be on the field in her place. Vlatko Andonovski’s side is expected to win handily, but will only do so if they get a strong effort from their central attacking midfielder. More than most players, Sanchez will be under the microscope.
Sanchez is, at her core, an entertainer. That’s obvious to anyone that has seen her play for the USWNT, the Spirit, at UCLA, or with youth national teams. The tricks, the moves, the celebrations all point to a player who wants to put on a show.
It also becomes clear in conversation. An interview about offseason training pivots on a dime into Sanchez laughingly recounting a one-car fender bender she got into days after buying a new Tesla (she and her passenger Emily Fox were not injured, and the car was easily repaired). A misunderstanding in a post-game interview comes with the kind of exaggerated reaction more commonly seen in sketch comedy than the media room at Audi Field.
In front of a crowd of thousands, or just talking to a reporter, Sanchez wants to bring some levity to the table. That informs her style of play, and in terms of raw ability, there are few doubts that Sanchez can deliver at the highest level. The creativity and showmanship that comes out when she’s joking around materialize in highlight-reel goals and assists. She’s the kind of player people pay to watch.
The questions for Sanchez have in the past revolved around consistency: can she impact games when she’s not absolutely feeling it, or not finding the pockets as easily as she’d like? Will the defensive effort be there?
Speaking to Pro Soccer Wire not long before being officially named to the USWNT’s World Cup roster, Sanchez is blunt about how the consistently high expectations placed on her for club and country — a big difference from the first three seasons of her pro career — have sparked a change for her.
“The standards are so high in both places that it’s like, no drop-off,” explained Sanchez. “I’m just feeling really prepared when I do go into [national team] camp because it’s like the same exact environment.”
According to her, that’s a stark contrast from years past, where things like high pressing and defensive effort were simply not part of her job description with the Spirit.
“Obviously, it’s expected at the national team. And I would do it there, and I’d come back and it was like…I mean, no one really cares,” said Sanchez. “But I just think [Spirit head coach Mark Parsons’ system] just helps in a way. I gotta train it a lot, I gotta practice it a lot, [do it] in games. And then it’s not a shock to the system when I go in with the national team.”
Sanchez was speaking about a specific need to put in more hard running without the ball, but it reflects the inconsistencies and instability that have surrounded her at club level. Despite a path that seemed to be leading inexorably to this point, Sanchez has barely experienced anything resembling smooth sailing.
Think about the last few years in the NWSL, and at the Washington Spirit in particular. The pandemic started weeks after Sanchez was selected fourth overall in the 2020 NWSL College Draft. Sanchez’s first pro season, a massively valuable moment for growth, would see her play a total of nine competitive games, all in empty, minor-league stadiums.
In 2021, the Spirit managed to win the league championship in completely unlikely fashion, but were also one of the focus points in the abuse scandal that has changed women’s sports on a fundamental level. Washington’s players — after the dismissal of head coach Richie Burke, one of the coaches found to have committed that abuse — ended up playing a major factor in an ownership change, standing together to demand a sale of the team.
In 2022, a new set of problems emerged. The Spirit could not find their feet amid a grueling, over-stuffed early season schedule. Burke’s replacement Kris Ward was dismissed over a training ground incident, while a team that had talked about its justifiably huge ambitions finished in 11th place.
Her club and international teammate Andi Sullivan, in an interview with Pro Soccer Wire, said it’s been at least as difficult as those facts would make it seem.
“I think she’s had — and not just lately and now, but her whole professional career — a lot of difficulty with the timing [of when] she came into the league, and the team that she came to, and the challenges that have been presented to her,” said Sullivan.
Despite all of that, Sanchez found her role with the USWNT growing. After getting her first cap late in 2021, she scored her first senior international goal in April 2022. Sanchez’s play may have waxed and waned amid the chaos with the Spirit, but Andonovski kept calling her in with the knowledge that she wasn’t far from being a truly special player at the highest level.
At long last, 2023 has offered Sanchez the stability to move consistently in that direction. Sanchez has responded accordingly, saying she approached this offseason as if it “might be the most important offseason” of her career.
“I think [there] was a lot more added pressure in obviously going into a World Cup year, and my first real opportunity to be on the team,” said Sanchez. “I think I kind of went at it a little bit differently. Me and some of the other players on the national team all trained together in LA, which was really fun and we got really good work in. I think that really helped me.”
That group included Fox as well as veterans like Crystal Dunn, Sofia Huerta, Alyssa Naeher, and Becky Sauerbrunn. In each case, those players aren’t just USWNT regulars, but models of consistency. It’s a dream group in terms of modeling the high standards that are a part of the national team’s internal culture, and in helping steer Sanchez towards this evolution in her game.
Still, the offseason is short, and most of Sanchez’s growth has come in training with the Spirit. On that front, she says that — after admitting some skepticism — the club’s own improvements have surpassed her expectations.
“It’s really funny, because last year, I was in the office of [Spirit general manager] Mark Krikorian and he was just like, ‘You have to trust me.’ He kept saying that,” said Sanchez. “I was like, ‘You know, I’ve heard this a lot of times, but OK, I will.’ And I think he’s just exceeded everything. Him and Michele [Kang, the Spirit’s owner] have put together the greatest staff group ever.
“I just feel like I’ve grown so much in such a short amount of time, on the field, off the field, professionalism, all the things. When I reflect back, I’m like… I would not have done that last year, I would have thought completely different. I just honestly think they’ve been great in my development, on the field and off the field.”
That manifests most specifically in a changed mindset when it comes to pressing. While the Spirit and USWNT play different systems, the No. 10 for both teams cannot be a passenger, and Sanchez says she’s been able to transform her mentality when it comes to being without the ball.
“I changed my mindset [from] ‘I’m just defending and pressing or whatever,'” Sanchez says with a mock roll of the eyes, conveying how she used to think of that part of the game as a sort of drudgery. “I think when you put your mind on ‘Oh, this can be a really good attacking opportunity to catch them when they’re disorganized,’ or whatever. I think when I thought about it that way, it’s really easy to want to get the ball.”
It has not gone unnoticed. Parsons told reporters in May that in his analysis of the team heading into 2023, Sanchez was “in and out of games, and [her] defending was in and out as well,” before characterizing her as undergoing “a transformation this year.”
Sullivan echoes that sentiment, saying that she’s seen Sanchez become more consistent, and also sharpen her ability to choose the right time and place to showcase her attacking skills.
“People were drawn to her for the Spirit and for the national team because of those moments of just being able to slice something open that no one else could,” said Sullivan. “Since going into the national team, and Vlatko demanding a lot of her and now, this offseason under Mark with a clear style and a clear role and clear standards, she’s just been able to absorb all of that and grow a lot.
“I think that’s credit, obviously to Mark and his coaching, but moreso Sanchez absorbing that information and being coachable and applying the information that he is giving her.”
That last point comes through from Sanchez herself, with the playmaker saying that she’s taken on the “never too high, never too low” philosophy that Parsons has preached since being hired late in 2022. That includes an increased emphasis on video analysis, which comes from both the Spirit and the USWNT.
With a laugh, Sanchez said the enjoyability of those sessions “depends how well I played,” but quickly adds that she’s taking on a more even-keeled approach to analyzing her mistakes. “It’s never as bad as you think it is. But then also, you can’t get better if you don’t watch it and analyze these things.”
Per Sanchez, a high level of specificity is a constant in those discussions, which has been a welcome shift away from coming to her own conclusions from game film.
“Before, when I would watch film on my own, I was like, ‘I think I could do something better here,’ but there’s nobody telling me exactly what I should be doing,” explained Sanchez. “Now it’s like, I know it’s expected of me, so it’s easier for me to analyze, but they also give me feedback: ‘You’re in good space, but you need to face up. You need to be out of the shadow, two feet to the right.’
“I think that just made it really easy on the field, to be remembering things like that. And I can kind of be like, ‘OK, this is exact same play, and I need to do this.’ And then it usually works out, so I think they know what they’re talking about.”
All of which adds up to the Sanchez of 2023: still extravagantly talented, but now a player that her teams can rely on in all phases of the game. This is the Sanchez that the USWNT will be looking to at the World Cup:
naaaaah this is silly pic.twitter.com/loRTxCS2hC
— ugh (@838_carlisle) June 24, 2023
The flair she’s known for is obvious, but consider everything else at play in this moment. Washington had just fallen behind 1-0, on the road against the Portland Thorns. Sophia Smith golazo, Providence Park is roaring.
It’s a gut-check moment for the Spirit, and as Dorian Bailey’s cross kind of creeps through, it’s running away from everyone.
This is where we see the difference. The cleverness and skill level involved in Sanchez’s heel flick — and it’s intentional, as you can see from how she finds Ashley Hatch with her eyes — is staggering, but she’s doing this at a full sprint. This play is a lost cause, and Sanchez had to put in major work to deliver that bit of magic. There’s no waiting for the moment the defense stands off of her, but rather an insistence. She’s not accepting a gift, but rather changing the game, as a protagonist.
Data bears this out with the Spirit. In 2021, with Sanchez on the field, the Spirit were barely breaking even, with FBref saying Washington’s expected goals per 90 minutes were merely a plus-0.05 above how they did without her. In 2022, that number fell into minus-0.07, meaning Washington fared slightly better when one of its best players was not on the field.
In 2023? That figure has jumped dramatically, with Sanchez’s plus-0.38 the best total on Washington’s roster.
As a player whose own in-game actions depend heavily on what the attacking midfielder in front of her is doing, Sullivan’s perspective may offer the best summary of Sanchez’s maturation.
“I’m looking at things that she has to deal with, and I’m blown away,” said an effusive Sullivan. “I think she is really growing more resilient [in] handling things, and I think that’s — honestly that’s how you survive the national team. Things don’t get easier. You get better at handling those difficult moments and you bounce back quicker and you stay steadier, and I think I see that more and more from her every day, and it’s really cool to witness.”
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