The U.S. women’s national team capped off a triumphant, resurgent 2024 with a 2-1 victory over the Netherlands on Tuesday.
They completed an unbeaten first half under head coach Emma Hayes, even without their productive front three, Sophia Smith, Trinity Rodman and Mallory Swanson.
On a bitterly cold night in The Hague, at the end of a long, tiring season, with the stars resting, they took to the field for a friendly match full of built-in caveats and excuses – and refused to use them. Instead, they came back from a goal down to beat the Dutch and cement themselves back in the top flight of women’s football.
However, their performance was also a timely reminder that their 2024 Olympic gold medals could not cure all their collective ills.
They were defeated 23-5. They were outplayed and sometimes overwhelmed by Dutch passing and positional play. They looked like a team that needs to improve and innovate to stay at the top – and their coach seems to understand this.
“The Olympics,” Hayes said in October, “are a great foundation and a great foundation for us. But it is not a predictor of future success.”
Hayes arrived in late May as the highest-paid coach in women’s soccer history, and almost immediately revived the USWNT. She restored her self-confidence. She instilled mental strength and perseverance. She helped players rediscover the fun.
“The poise, composure and confidence we have had and continue to have is directly related to how our manager is,” US captain Lindsey Horan said last week.
All this was reflected at the Olympic Games in Paris. It took the Americans to six consecutive victories and gold. But it didn’t completely erase the reasons the USWNT had failed at a World Cup just 12 months earlier. With the dynamic ‘Triple Espresso’, Smith, Swanson and Rodman have put to paper the technical and tactical shortcomings that became apparent during the knockout rounds – and even more so, on Tuesday in the Netherlands.
And Hayes understands this.
She has spent the past few months assessing the Olympic Games and then developing a comprehensive ‘strategy’ for the 2027/2028 World Cup Olympic cycle.
She certainly devoured film and analyzed data. She has jumped from Zoom to Zoom, discussing her findings with staff at all levels of American soccer. In January, she will present her plan for the next three years and beyond at a conference alongside a unique Futures Camp for young players, “so we can begin the next steps of our journey,” she said.
In October, she gave a preview of her plan in a conversation with reporters.
“Tactically,” Hayes said, “we will evolve.”
The evolution will of course be multifaceted. The plan must be multi-faceted. Hayes’ broader, federation-wide vision is to “build a strategy centered around the female lens,” both off and on the field. Last week, she also hinted that she would be dipping her mighty hands into the even broader American soccer ecosystem. It is “thriving,” she said, at the elementary, college and pro levels; but it is broken and defective. “Bringing that together into a development strategy for women’s football is probably the only thing that’s missing,” Hayes said
That seems to be her long-term goal. In the short term, she will focus on “a coherent strategy that is achievable for us, starting with what we do at the national team level.”
Presumably she will try to align the needs of the USWNT with the way teenagers are coached and taught by youth national teams.
She will call up new waves of players into her senior team, in a bid to widen the player pool.
She started that this fall. On Saturday she trotted out unproven players in front of 78,000 fans at Wembley Stadium in London; they deserved a 0-0 draw. Three days later, one of the newcomers, Yazmeen Ryan, provided Gotham FC teammate Lynn Williams with the USWNT winner.
However, Hayes is sure they still have a long way to go.
Without a fortuitous own goal and six colossal saves from retiring goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher, their World Cup savior, they would have lost to the Netherlands on Tuesday.
They are revived, but not yet transformed. That’s Hayes’ next assignment at the helm of the USWNT.
