The FIFA Women’s World Cup has been contested eight times, including once when the tournament was disguised under another name, and never has the United States women’s national team finished lower than third. They have won 80 percent of their games and lost only four times. They have outscored their opponents by precisely 100 goals.
They have not trailed in any World Cup game since the 2011 quarterfinal against Brazil.
Oh, and they’ve won half the championships ever awarded.
So the word “dominant” gets quite a workout when the USWNT is discussed. It might be no surprise, then, that the description has grown a bit tired. Also, it’s never really been true.
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One could say this team has been excellent, extraordinary, tenacious, pugnacious, resilient, persistent or enduring and never be incorrect. Dominant, though? Against Thailand in the opening game of the 2019 World Cup, for sure. Otherwise, that word rarely has been applicable. It’s the nature of the sport, and of the competition.
If you’ve paid close attention to the team over the years, especially in the past 12 months, it shouldn’t come as any shock that the USWNT probably won’t raise the trophy in 2023. It’s never been as easy as it might have seemed because it happened so often, and it’ll be more difficult this year than ever before.
“Would I be happy with anything short of a third straight win? No,” head coach Vlatko Andonovski told reporters at the team’s June media day. “Absolutely not. There’s only one thing in mind going to this tournament, and that is our goal is to win the World Cup.
“I don’t think anyone on our team thinks any different.”
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The U.S. women begin their pursuit of a third consecutive World Cup title, something no national team ever has achieved, with a game Friday at 9 p.m. EDT, against first-time entrant Vietnam. They do so as a team diminished by age in some instances, by injury in so many. If they struggle, the contention that the “world has caught up” to the USWNT will become common, but the world never has been far behind.
“This is not a team that does any sort of resting on its laurels. It’s always about the next game, the next part of progress we can make, the next thing we can fight for where we can use our platform, and we continue on the field to be the best team that we possibly can,” veteran forward Megan Rapinoe said.
“Being one of the best teams in the world — obviously, we have the No. 1 ranking, you say we’re the best, I’ll say one of the best because there’s amazing teams out there — you’re always on that razor’s edge. And certainly around the World Cup there’s so much to fight for.”
Does anyone remember how excruciating the trek through the knockout stages of the 2019 World Cup was? Every single game short of the final — against Spain, England and France — ended 2-1. Does anyone recall the scoreless draw against Sweden in 2015 group play, or the lifeless 1-0 quarterfinal victory over China, or how the USWNT had to rearrange their midfield midway through the tournament to find a winning formula?
The gap hasn’t closed between the USWNT and the rest of the world, because it never was that great to start. The greatest difference in women’s soccer, from the time Brandi Chastain energized America with her penalty kick to win the 1999 World Cup until the kickoff of this year’s tournament is there now are more teams seriously involved in the chase for the trophy.
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In the first couple decades after the soccer world was introduced to the FIFA World Championship for Women’s Football for the M&Ms Cup — they really called it that in 1991, instead of the Women’s World Cup — the competition was comprised of the isolated rise of a Norway or China, the consistent presence of Japan, Brazil and Canada, and the reliable European powers Germany and Sweden. In the past decade, though, through increased investment in their club and national team programs, England, France and Spain all ascended to status as formidable contenders.
Having more teams capable of winning it means the USWNT is that much more likely to lose it.
And there are questions this team faces that should make a title in 2023 tougher to achieve:
1. Injuries
The USWNT are not the only team in this tournament that will be missing key regulars or star players. Forward Beth Mead, named the Player of the Tournament as England won Euro 2022, is out with a knee injury. Her teammates Fran Kirby and Leah Williamson, who started in the Euro final, are missing, as well. Vivianne Miedema, who has 95 international goals, will not play for the Netherlands.
The U.S. has been hit harder, though, than pretty much everyone. The two players who were expected to join Sophia Smith on a revamped front line, Mallory Swanson and Catarina Macario, will not play. Also absent: Sam Mewis, who started five of the seven 2019 World Cup games in midfield; forward Christen Press, who appeared in every 2019 game and started twice; defender Abby Dahlkemper, one of the team’s best passers out of defense, and captain Becky Sauerbrunn, a fixture in central defense for each of the past two World Cups.
The team that is in New Zealand is the best the USWNT can field at the moment, but it is significantly less than the best that might be offered on a day when everyone’s knees are intact.
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2. Vlatko Andonovski
This is his second major tournament as USWNT head coach, and the first didn’t exactly go great.
Two summers ago in Japan, the team earned an Olympic bronze medal after getting slammed in the opening game by Sweden, 3-0, managing only a scoreless draw in the final group game against Australia and then needing a penalty shootout against the Netherlands to reach the semifinals.
Andonovski thus enters with a 2W-2L-2D record in major tournaments. And perhaps more concerning is his 13W-6L-4D record against top-10 opposition.
He is respected by his players, with Rapinoe among the most publicly supportive. And he never has had the luxury of fully realizing his vision for this team’s transition from the time when Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and Tobin Heath controlled the forward line because of the injury to Macario, and later on Swanson, as well as the extended absences of midfielder Julie Ertz and left back Crystal Dunn as they went through pregnancies and gave birth in 2022.
It’s fair to say, though, we don’t know if he’s a championship coach at the international level.
And we might not know after this World Cup, either.
3. USWNT’s attacking woes
Since the transition to a relatively new squad began after the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021, the USWNT have averaged only 1.4 goals per game against top-10 opponents, and only once, in a 3-0 friendly victory at Australia nearly two years ago, did they score more than two goals.
The struggle hasn’t just been against the strongest opponents either. Against Mexico in last summer’s ConcacafW Championship, the qualifier for this World Cup, the USWNT managed only a 1-0 victory. In their past three games, friendlies against Cup-bound Ireland (No. 30 in the world) and Wales (No. 31) the U.S. scored only five goals combined.
Again, some of that can be attributed to missing Macario, but Swanson was on the wing opposite Smith for a majority of the games against top-10 teams, and with both of them gone came the recent ineffectiveness.
Young Trinity Rodman could be the difference in taking over for Swanson, but Andonovski chose not to start her against Wales in the “send-off match” earlier this month. Rodman entered a scoreless game in the second half and scored the only goals in a 2-0 U.S. victory.
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4. Defense still green
When the USWNT opened the 2019 World Cup in France, the back line of Kelley O’Hara, Dahlkemper, Sauerbrunn and Dunn had an average of 100 caps, and O’Hara and Sauerbrunn were on the World Cup roster for the third time.
With Sauerbrunn and Dahlkemper injured, and with Andonovski choosing to bring only two full-time central defenders to Oceania, the projected defense of right back Emily Fox, central defenders Naomi Girma and Alana Cook, and left back Dunn have an average of 50 caps, and if you remove Dunn’s 132 from that equation, the number drops to 23.
Of all the positions at which to be extraordinarily young, and not very deep, the back line isn’t the one most coaches would prefer.
5. USWNT mentality
Think of Rapinoe’s cross to Abby Wambach and the latter’s perfect header to tie Brazil at the very end of extra time in their 2011 quarterfinal game. Think of Carli Lloyd’s 69th-minute penalty kick to break an agonizing scoreless tie against Germany in the 2015 semifinals. Or, most of all, remember Alyssa Naeher’s penalty save to protect a one-goal lead in the 84th minute of the 2019 semifinal game against England.
The USWNT always has believed it should win, a quality that was passed from Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy to Wambach and Shannon Boxx to Alex Morgan, Rapinoe and Lloyd to … well, who? Most projected starting lineups for the USWNT in New Zealand/Australia contain only four or five players who were regulars in the 2019 World Cup, depending on whether midfielder Julie Ertz is prepared — mentally and physically — to go 90 minutes for the games that will be required to win this tournament.
“The mentality is so important, because the deeper you get in these tournaments, everyone’s feeling the fatigue, everyone’s feeling the pressure, and it really comes down to what’s in between the ears and what’s in your heart,” Lloyd told The Sporting News. “Those are the teams that find a way against all odds to be able to lift that trophy in the end.”
(SN content producer Kyle Irving contributed to this article)