USWNT navigated uncertainty to win trophies but questions remain ahead of Emma Hayes’ arrival

At last, we’ve reached the end of the interim era of the U.S. women’s national team. Emma Hayes’ reign is in sight.

Interim head coach Twila Kilgore had the unenviable task of stewarding the team from the aftermath of their heartbreakingly early World Cup exit to a place of rebuilding, wielding the authority of a head coach while understanding it was her role to gracefully step aside at the scheduled time, once again to take up the role of an assistant when Hayes arrives at the end of May.

But with the end of an era comes the reality that there are no more chances to get it wrong now, not really. Hayes will need to hit the ground running with the U.S. in the two training camps she gets before the Olympics, one at the start of June and one in July that will also act as a farewell tour ahead of the tournament. Hearing from players, her arrival sounds as though it’ll come as a relief to a team that wants some stability after a period of post-World Cup upheaval.

“I think now we see just a lot of uncertainty,” defender Tierna Davidson said in Columbus before the SheBelieves Cup final victory against Canada. “We have a lot of new fantastic players coming in and making their mark. I think, as I said before, having a new coach, you never know exactly what they’re going to want or what they see and what they value. So I think there’s just a little bit more of a question mark.”

This is a roster that has lost some of its core leadership with Julie Ertz exiting after one last hurrah in 2023, Megan Rapinoe retiring, and quite frankly, Becky Sauerbrunn’s lingering absence even though she’s still an active player. Yet the team looks like it’s managed to find direction, even if it’s through a zig-zag path. Bonkers rain game against Canada aside last month, the unanimous opinion of the players coming out of the CONCACAF W Gold Cup was that it was a rousing success. It gave them real stakes against competitive opponents that simulated the cadence of the Olympics, allowing the team to experience a pressure-cooker scenario while they’re still trying to find their footing post-World Cup.

With the addition of the two SheBelieves games to help develop tactics, expand the player pool, and get Mallory Swanson and Catarina Macario reintroduced into the environment, the team seems to be as set up as they’ll ever be for Hayes’ takeover.

However, there are competing pros and cons. New and returning players have received valuable playing time to the point that some of them, Jaedyn Shaw most prominently, already look like confident locks for the Olympic roster. They’ve also gone through a couple of mental wringers, such as the 2-0 loss to Mexico in the Gold Cup and conceding first in both SheBelieves games and bouncing back both times. But the team still looks a little wobbly in terms of having an identifiable style and delivering consistent performances. There’s plenty of individual brilliance to be had in this player pool, but can Hayes cement them together in tournament mode?

The changeover can’t come soon enough. Even as the players have put on a collective display of equanimity over not having a head coach for eight months and counting, they’ve also acknowledged that it hasn’t been ideal.

“I don’t want to say uncomfortable, but it is just weird,” forward Trinity Rodman told former USWNT midfielder Sam Mewis on The Women’s Game podcast last month. “There is very, very limited communication and it’s communication from Twila to us. So it’s like you’re being scouted all the time, almost.”

Simplifying the chain of communication to come through Kilgore makes sense. It avoids mixing messages and reinforces that there is one head coach at a time, instead of players getting overwhelmed having two people telling them what to do, but it also keeps Hayes removed from these players. It whittles down the time that it will take for her to integrate within the locker room, earn the team’s trust, and in turn learn how best to manage so many different personalities.

Midfielder Sam Coffey is one of those newer players trying to lock down an Olympic spot, and she good-naturedly acknowledged “the chaos around us.”

“I think there’s a lot of change that’s happening right now,” she said in Columbus. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, there’s a lot of factors out of our control.

“For me personally, the more that I just focus on playing and being my best and like the highest version of myself every day, that’s what I can control…. We can focus on what we have here.”

Coffey assisted Shaw’s equalizing goal against Japan. (Photo by Robin Alam,Getty Images)

The U.S. demonstrated its ability to all-out press against Japan; if the team has any identity right now, it’s that high press, controlling the game off of defense and using it to regain the ball and create goalscoring opportunities. They were able to progress the ball both out of the midfield and through the wings, particularly on the left side with Jenna Nighswonger pushed high, Swanson dropping into the pocket, and Lindsey Horan underpinning them both.

“I think it is quintessential U.S. women’s national team to just be so front-footed, so hungry, so lethal in our defensive shape to ultimately lead to our attack,” said Coffey. “I think our press is just lethal. It is so hard to play against. And I think, again, we don’t have the mentality of like oh, we’re pressing to win the ball back. We’re pressing to score goals.”

It was a different story against Canada as the U.S. rolled out a more conservative midfield with Coffey, Emily Sonnett, and Horan as opposed to Coffey, Horan, and Shaw. They also shifted Shaw out to the left in a 4-2-3-1. And, crucially, Canada pressed early against the U.S. out of a five-back formation, trying to engage their wingbacks and exploit space behind. It was a completely different tempo from the first game; Japan also pressed early but then got overwhelmed by the U.S. response to going down, whereas Canada and the U.S. stood and traded blows for longer.

It made for a much tighter game in which the U.S. didn’t look nearly as fluid as they did against Japan until they adjusted in the second half with some substitutes that allowed them to move Shaw back into midfield. But once they did adjust, they added yet more evidence that this team is best when their young attackers are allowed to hungrily pursue goals. The second goal against Canada, with Shaw picking out her weighted pass into the path of Rodman, who beat her defender and then dished it to an onrushing Smith also beating her defender in the box, was a perfect example of this team at its best.

A BEAUTY IN THE BUILDUP AND WE’RE AHEAD! #USWNT x @vw pic.twitter.com/zeBj6HkEuM

— U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (@USWNT) April 10, 2024

Canada coach Bev Priestman named Smith, Swanson, and Rodman in particular as players who stretched them vertically and ran Canada back and forth in transition, changing up the dynamic of the game.

“I just think the out-and-out pace and the overloads in flank areas, that’s where we got kind of caught out,” she said. “And we’re really pushing and pressing and then they go and drop a ball through the middle (on the second goal) and that pace is unstoppable.….

“They’re a dynamic team. You look down the bench and that’s not a bad bench to bring on.”

U.S. captain Alex Morgan also pointed at the team’s adjusted positioning and substitutions in the second half as game-changers.

“I think our transition and quick turning in the pocket and playing through behind their back line was really what broke it,” she said.

After the last game of the interim era, Kilgore praised the players for dealing with uncertainty while trying to make an Olympic roster, win competitions, onboard new players, say goodbye to longtime players, and recover from the World Cup. The turnaround from the World Cup to the Olympics is always tight, and the players don’t really get much of a break before they’re thrust back into it. They played their first home-soil games just 46 days after being eliminated from the World Cup, and never really stopped moving after that between international windows, Gold Cup, and SheBelieves. Despite that the team feels somewhat mentally refreshed, the last remnants of the World Cup finally turned over.

“I think Twila has done a really good job of balancing a tough position in helping us move on from the World Cup, take the lessons that we needed, but at the same time start a new chapter and start fresh,” Smith said in Columbus. “I think we’re doing such a good job of building off of that.”

Under Kilgore, we saw the development of Shaw and Olivia Moultrie, as well as some breadcrumbs laid for the future development of Lily Yohannes and Gisele Thompson. Mia Fishel also got her first caps under Kilgore and was in contention amongst the forwards until her ACL injury in February.

Overall, the USWNT got quite a lot out of its final matches before Hayes’ arrival, chief among them a plan of attack that they know can pay dividends when executed with the right energy. But they also played out different scenarios — coming back from a goal down against two different teams, holding a narrow lead and sitting back more, finishing penalties, and playing different combinations of players in the same formations. Added to their Gold Cup experience, there’s plenty to suggest that Hayes will be able to springboard into something workable ahead of the Olympics despite her limited time.

(Top photo: Robin Alam/Getty Images)