After stunning loss to Sweden, USWNT seek to regain 'ruthless' edge vs. New Zealand
By Doug McIntyre
FOX Sports Soccer Writer
The United States women’s national team’s opening loss to Sweden in the Tokyo Olympics was certainly stunning, but there's nothing the world’s top-ranked squad can do to change it now.
Beyond watching video and trying to correct the many mistakes they made in Wednesday’s comprehensive 3-0 pasting by the Swedes, there’s really no reason for the USWNT to dwell on their first loss in 45 games.
There simply isn’t enough time – not with Americans’ now-crucial second match, Saturday against New Zealand (7:30 a.m. ET, NBCSN), fast approaching.
"You always want to start off on the right foot and [get] three points, but to channel my inner Bill Belichick, we’re on to New Zealand," said starting goalkeeper and (you guessed it) New England native Alyssa Naeher, name-checking the famously unsentimental coach of the NFL’s Patriots on a Zoom call with reporters Thursday morning. "Our focus now is forward, and we’ve got another big match in less than 48 hours."
Understandably, Wednesday’s lopsided defeat raised all sorts of questions about the state of the program. The U.S. women hardly ever lose. They certainly don’t get embarrassed on the global stage, one they’ve dominated — with four World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals in the past 30 years — like few international sports teams, men’s or women’s, have before them.
Just one game in, coach Vlatko Andonovski’s lineup, tactics, substitutions and roster decisions have come under heavy scrutiny.
Is this squad, which features several longtime regulars who are now deep into their 30s (Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe) and likely competing in their last major tournament for their country, too old? Is heart-and-soul midfielder Julie Ertz healthy enough to contribute full-time?
After winning back-to-back World Cups in 2015 and ’19 under former manager Jill Ellis, is the team as hungry and as well-prepared as it needs to be? Is Andonovski, far more of a player-friendly personality than the combative Ellis was, showing his inexperience on the global stage?
Then there’s the biggest, most pertinent question: How will the U.S. respond?
"It’s a little bit of a shock," Andonovski admitted after Wednesday’s loss. "It has put us in a big hole, and we’re the only ones who can get ourselves out of it."
Who’d bet against them, though? After all, this is almost the same team that ripped through all comers at France 2019, scoring more goals in a single World Cup than any nation ever had. They have their pride and the hard-won swagger of a champion. And now, for the first time in a long time, they actually have something to prove.
"We’ve all known that adversity was going to come at some point in this tournament. You just never know when it’s going to hit. It hit in game one," Naeher said. "We’ve all been through different forms of adversity individually and as a group. The strength of this team is the mentality."
As bad as the opener went, things could be a lot worse. Had that hiccup happened in the knockout stage, it would’ve been a fatal one — as it was when Sweden knocked the Americans out of the quarterfinals in Rio. Instead, New Zealand, which is the weakest of the red, white and blue’s three first-round foes (the U.S. wraps up group play July 27 versus Australia), awaits Saturday.
Veterans Lloyd, Naeher, Rapinoe, Crystal Dunn, Kelley O’Hara and captain Becky Sauerbrunn are leading the reset internally, as one might expect. There sure doesn’t seem to be any sense of panic emanating from within the dressing room walls. It’s more like a reconfirmed resolve.
"As Kelley said to us: 'We don’t have a choice,’" said defender Tierna Davidson, who subbed in for the final 10 minutes of the last match. "We have to come out the next game, and we have to be absolutely ruthless. I think that’s what everyone has on their mind right now."
There’s precedent here, too. After going unbeaten in all of 2018, the USWNT traveled to France for a friendly in early 2019 and lost 3-1. Five months later, the U.S. eliminated the World Cup hosts in Paris.
At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the U.S. dropped its opener to Norway before going on to win the gold medal. Lloyd scored the winner in the final against Brazil. Winger Tobin Heath is the other holdover from that team.
"I think that it’s actually important for the players that were there to call on that as much as possible and put it on the table and say, ‘Hey, this team has been in this position before. It’s not unheard of,'" Davidson said of Lloyd and Heath. "It’s early in the tournament, and we still have plenty of minutes to play. I think that we definitely have the ability to do [what the 2008 squad did] with the kind of players that we have on our team — the gritty, won’t-back-down kind of players. I’m looking forward to how we come out on Saturday."
She certainly isn’t alone.
One of the most prominent soccer journalists in North America, Doug McIntyre has covered United States men’s and women’s national teams in more than a dozen countries, including multiple FIFA World Cups. Before joining FOX Sports, the New York City native was a staff writer for Yahoo Sports and ESPN. Follow him on Twitter @ByDougMcIntyre.
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