PREVIEW: USWNT Opens Tokyo 2020 Olympics With Group G Showdown Against Sweden

Let the Games begin! After a year of waiting, the U.S. Women’s National Team will launch its Olympic campaign on July 21, taking on Sweden in its first match at the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Kickoff is at 5:30 p.m. local/4:30 a.m. ET at Tokyo Stadium in Tokyo and the match will be broadcast in the United States on the USA Network and Telemundo, with streaming coverage also provided at NBCOlympics.com and through the Telemundo Deportes App. The match will also be replayed later that day on NBCSN at 8:30 a.m. ET and 6 p.m. ET.

The USA enters the tournament looking to capture its fifth gold medal and, in the process, become the first reigning Women’s World Cup champion to capture Olympic gold. Seventeen players on the USA’s Olympic roster helped the USA win its fourth World Cup title in France during the summer of 2019.

To do so, the USA will not only have to navigate a grueling schedule with only two rest days between matches in the heat and humidity of the Japanese summer, but will also have to contend with a talented field of opposition, beginning with Sweden.

The coaching situation bears watching, mainly because U.S. Soccer does not have a good track record in this department. The organization must be willing to make changes on the field. Making the coach the villain in this — as was done in the Tom Sermanni episode — would be a mistake. Vlatko should stay, and there shouldn’t be backbiting about it.

This is not unique to soccer, by the way. It is a familiar pattern. The hardest thing to do in any team sport is to rebuild while staying on top. A great team starts to decline. The front office and the marketing people view the players as the franchise. The first response is to fire the coach. But if the team is aging, firing the coach is not the solution. How long does it take the front office to figure that out?

Again and again, we see the front office firing the coach, and maybe a second coach, before finally biting the bullet and accepting that the aging superstars in whom they have invested a decade of marketing have to go. The next coach comes in with a mandate to make changes, and he does.

Jill Ellis stepped down as her team peaked. Absent COVID, they would have carried their World Cup roster with few changes into the Olympics last year. The retirements would have begun a year ago and in 2021 we would already be seeing waves of younger players getting their chance. COVID pushed that all back a year.

The cycle is inexorable. The next Word Cup is fast approaching and we are a year behind on an already overdue rebuilding. It’s going to be interesting. Germany and Japan, two powerhouse programs of the last decade, are both deep in rebuilding cycles. France, England, Sweden and the Netherlands are all strong. France may be the best of the lot, although Wendie Renard is now over 30; she’s a matchup challenge for every other women’s team and is probably the extra element that elevates France a notch above its current peers. With the incumbent King of the Hill dethroned, women’s soccer looks wide open at the moment. The U.S. will be in the mix, but just how good remains to be determined.

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