© Peter van den Berg-Imagn Images
‘Tis the season for reflection, and it’s OK to be blunt: The past 18 months have felt like whiplash for fans of the United States women’s national team.
The entire future of the program was ostensibly in an existential crisis following a Round-of-16 exit at the 2023 FIFA World Cup, the Americans’ worst finish at a major tournament.
A great hope followed the nadir, however. U.S. Soccer convinced Emma Hayes, one of the best coaches in the world, to take the head coaching job and lead the team back to the top of the world. That plan was (and still is) about the 2027 World Cup – but success came far sooner.
The Americans won the gold medal at the 2024 Olympics, defeating Brazil in just the 10th game in charge for Hayes. An all-world forward line stole headlines while a generational centerback anchored the team’s defense and — most enlightening of all after the preceding years — there was both a tactical flexibility and grittiness about the team. This, in many ways, was the United States of old — the team that won four World Cups and four Olympics prior to this summer.
One way or another, history will show 2024 as a comeback year for the United States.
This year was about answering questions. Could Hayes really turn around the entire program? And could the U.S. really succeed at the Olympics with Hayes only arriving in the job full-time in late May? Both questions appear to have been answered with an emphatic, ‘yes’ — the latter being factually irrefutable.
This year was also about generational shifts. Megan Rapinoe retired at the end of 2023, and Alex Morgan followed by the end of 2024, after being left off the Olympic squad. A new forward line of Trinity Rodman, Sophia Smith and Mallory Swanson firmly established itself as the team’s future, while Naomi Girma assumed the role of defensive anchor.
This year was awkward, too, don’t forget. There was the long wait for Hayes, and there was uncertainty around just how much she was working on the U.S. from afar while she finished coaching Chelsea. There were generally encouraging results mixed with a historic loss to Mexico at the Gold Cup that ushered in some PTSD from the World Cup.
Perhaps most of all, this year was about results. All the above — from a universally lauded coaching hire to dominant individual performances at the Olympics — mattered for the U.S. re-establishing its mojo on the world stage. The sentiment after the 2023 World Cup was that nobody is scared to play the Americans anymore. That, too, is likely still true: Nobody is scared, per se, but the days were short lived for opponents to feel like the Americans are vulnerable.
Winning an Olympics will do that.
Hayes already had the green light from U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker to make the changes that she, in her uniquely expert opinion, felt necessary to secure a strong future for the U.S. women’s national team program. Winning the Olympics gives Hayes even more freedom to be bold, a bit like (granting that they are unique and generally different circumstances) Jill Ellis had in 2016 after winning the 2015 World Cup.
In January, Hayes will call a senior team camp and run it alongside a “Futures Camp” of players she wants to test in the environment to see if they should be called in again. She will also gather the entire women’s national team staff, including youth personnel, to present her long-term vision for the 2027 World Cup and 2028 Olympics.
All that rests on the foundation laid in 2024, when the U.S. turned the page from being once a global giant uncertain of itself and its future, to a trophy-winning team that fully introduced the core of its next generation. In 2024, the U.S. women’s national team announced it was back – and maybe it had never fully left.
