Credit where credit is due. Sweden is an excellent team. The U.S. had not played well in group stage but they were sharp in this game, with a decided edge in the field. Ordinarily the U.S. would have won this game -- I'll say 2-0, and that's cutting Sweden some slack. The big key was the Swedish goalkeeper, who had a Hall of Fame level game. That happens.
I was reminded of Hope Solo in the Olympic gold medal game against Japan in 2012. Japan had a great team and had just won the 2011 Women's World Cup (in a game the U.S. should have won). The U.S. and Japan were the top two teams in the world. They got a rematch in the 2012 Olympic final. In a reverse of the World Cup storyline, Japan clearly outplayed the U.S., but Solo (who was one of the all-time greats, her alcohol problems off the field notwithstanding) made a series of incredible saves and single-handedly kept the U.S. in the game. It happens. This time it happened for Sweden.
So credit where credit is due.
A point to note, because it shows the Achilles heel of this U.S. team. We now exit the World Cup after four games, and the forwards did not score a goal. Nor did they score on a PK. When they lined up to take the penalties, midfielders took the first three shots for the U.S., and they drilled them. In a surprise, Alyssa Naeher, the U.S. goalkeeper -- who had already made a PK save that should have won the game -- took and drilled a PK herself. The forwards? Megan Rapinoe and Sophia Smith both missed the frame, going high each time. Alex Morgan had already been subbed out for Megan Rapinoe, which was a coaching mistake. Lynn Williams did not take a PK. The final U.S. miss was by Kelly O'Hara, who is dangerous but is still a defender; she hit the side post.
The U.S. forwards did not score at all in this World Cup. This, folks, is a clue.
What is wrong with the U.S. forwards? Glad you asked. The U.S. had won back to back World Cups. Intelligent soccer commentators knew what that meant, but the general press once again used this tournament to demonstrate its invincible ignorance and stupidity. The MSM was full of idiot chatter about how the U.S. was a prohibitive favorite and was seriously underperforming. The reality is that back to back World Cups championships -- as with Germany in 2003 and 2007 -- means that a team has had a golden generation, and the problem with golden generations is that they all age out together. The hardest thing to do in any team sport is to rebuild while staying on top, because there is heavy pressure to stand too long on a pat hand. It's hard to cut players who have been winning championships for the last ten years.
So the problem with the U.S. forwards is straightforward, and it's squarely on the coach. Vladko didn't go deep enough in cleaning house. Several of his roster picks were simply bad calls. After her dismal showing as a sub against Sweden, Megan Rapinoe is the easiest example. Put her politics aside. She's 38 years old. She's been battling injuries the last couple of years. She hadn't played much this season in the NWSL, and she has been missing from the national team roster in most of the 2022-23 friendlies. IMHO, she should not have been on the roster. She was clearly brought back based on past performance, and she came back off the injury list. She was picked on the basis of past performances, and that was clearly a big mistake. She could have won the game against Sweden, but she missed her PK. That's on the coach.
Injuries are the extenuating factor for the U.S. forwards. The team was clearly rebuilding after the 2019 World Cup win (which it entered, per the U.S. custom, as the oldest team in the field), followed by a thoroughly disappointing performance in the 2020 Olympics (when age got exposed). COVID set back the timetable, but the last two years have seen wholesale experimentation. Everyone knew that the strength of the team was now in midfield and that the forwards were a problem. Catarina Macario, a forward, had emerged as the team's top scorer, one of the most dynamic young players in the world, and a lock for this year's roster. She went down with an ACL tear and has not worked her way back. No sooner did she go down that Mallory Swanson finally jelled and exploded as the winger that everyone had expected her to be. In late 2022 and early 2023, she had scored half the national team's goals. She went down in April with a torn patella tendon, in a non-contact injury.
With Macario and Swanson healthy, the U.S. would have had a new golden generation in the making. My crystal ball says the U.S. would have been a solid favorite in this year's World Cup. Without them ... well, you saw what happened.
Injuries are part of the game. Every team gets them. But losing your top two scorers, and two of the best ten strikers in the world, is above and beyond.
I never thought this U.S. team would repeat as champions. First and foremost, the law of averages catches up at some point. After group stage, the World Cup is a high stakes, single-elimination tournament against peer level teams. Even the best team is going to have to dodge a bullet or two. Winning back to back championships means that the U.S. team was coming in with an eight game winning streak against peer level teams. Extending that to twelve was always unlikely. International women's soccer is too well balanced for that.
The U.S., Germany and Sweden entered this year's tournament ranked first, second and third in the world. Germany didn't make it out of group. The U.S. almost didn't make it out of group. Sweden has the advantage of playing in Europe, where there are good teams on every streetcorner; the U.S. suffers from playing through CONCACAF, which is the U.S. and Canada, which is always solid, and then a bunch of Central American and Caribbean teams that don't belong on the same field. (The U.S. men's team has to scramble to get past Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, and T&T; the women's team, no.) Sweden is a legit peer level team and one of the favorites to win it all.
Still, all the U.S. needed to win against Sweden was for the forwards to score one goal, or one PK. They didn't. And that is the problem. Macario and Swanson are still young. Along with Mallory Pugh, they are the future.
That said, the U.S. edge in international women's soccer is eroding, and it will continue to erode. The rest of the world -- outside of Latin America, which seems to be stuck in MachoLand and doesn't support women's sports -- is steadily improving its youth development programs and domestic leagues. At the professional level, the European women's leagues are at parity. East Asia is coming on strong, and Japan is again a contender to win it all. Africa used to be so far behind that it was pitiful, but that was a problem of poverty and the lack of developmental programs, not an absence of potential talent. The African teams have finally broken out of the cellar and surprised everyone this year. This will continue. The U.S. has a huge talent pool because of the depth of women's college soccer, and the NWSL will continue to be one of the world's top leagues. But the rest of the world is catching up. Which is a good thing.
By the way: I HATE "break the plane of the goal" scores that are awarded via instant replay. On Sweden's winning PK, Alyssa Naeher -- who had already saved on PK -- got a hand on the ball and batted it up. It was now a floater right in the goalmouth. She got a second touch on it and cleared it before it hit the ground or the back of the net. The technology clearly showed that the ball had indeed broken the plane of the goal while still in midair. Correct call. But I've hated those kinds of goals ever since television and instant replay took over college football and the NFL. The tv networks now pull the strings and they relentlessly rig the rules to generate cheap scoring. That is why we have wide receivers scoring touchdowns on balls they theoretically "controlled" for 2.7 nanoseconds before the ball slips through their hands. Or runner scoring touchdowns because they are ruled to have "controlled" a fumble for a fraction of a second before losing said fumble in the next instant. This is the soccer equivalent.
Me bad. Mallory Pugh = Mallory Swanson. She got married last year to Dansby Swanson, the baseball player. FWIW, she also mentions being Christian on her Wikipedia page. Assuming she fully recovers from her injury — and it’s none of our business, really, but assuming that she and Dansby don’t start hatching little Swansons — she is going to be around for a long time.
FWIW, the U.S. team had at least four moms out on the field, all in their 30’s — just as a note to those who think Megan Rapinoe is the norm.
No one cares.
Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful analysis.
From an execution standpoint, one thing I say repeatedly in the first three games (I didn’t watch this mornings match) were headers from midfield in space. Plenty of room to settle and possess. Why give up a possession and cause a 50/50 ball. Very annoying. Also the forward who was fast as greased lightning took multiple shots is space where the angle was not in her favor. In space so plenty of took to touch inside and open up the goal. Don’t get it.