The U.S. women’s national team advanced to the knockout round of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup on Tuesday, but only by the skin of its teeth.
Vlatko Andonovski’s finished second in Group E after earning a 0-0 draw with Portugal in its final group stage match. Portugal came close to stealing a late victory against the two-time defending World Cup winners but struck the post in second-half stoppage time.
Portugal didn’t back down against the Americans in the first half, with Jessica Silva pulling her shot wide of the USWNT net in the 24th minute.
Lynn Williams forced Portuguese goalkeeper Ines Pereira into a strong save in the 28th minute but proceeded to sky her rebound attempt over the net.
The USWNT was denied an opening goal in the 54th minute after Alex Morgan’s shot was cleared off the goalline. Diana Gomes raced back to clear Morgan’s effort and keep Portugal level with 30+ minutes to play.
Pereira stood tall in the Portugal net, making six saves and keeping the Americans at bay on several chances. Francisco Neto’s squad even came close to leapfrogging the Americans into second place with one of the final kicks of the match.
Ana Capeta snuck behind the USWNT backline in the 91st minute and had a strong opportunity to win the match. However, Alyssa Naeher’s right post came to the rescue and denied the 25-year-old a heroic opportunity to eliminate the USWNT in the final minutes.
Despite advancement to the Round of 16, the USWNT looked lost through majority of the match and will hope for a better showing in a do-or-die match.
The USWNT will next face Group G winners Sweden on August 6 in Melbourne.
I mean, right now everyone game plans to stop the USWNT’s intentions, so some kind of 180 on that in the quiver to help set up what we want by focusing on stopping what they want and anticipating their approach because of the predictability of ours, then punish them
and this thought
if Vlatko was ever going to switch things up and be less predictable, if he’s planned for it already would be best of course, this would be a great game to do it coming up, even if for a spell…….
an effective changeup–key word effective–can pay dividends in these things. we’ve all seen it
we’ll see
Good call. Lots of direct play. Maybe I’m wrong but I think we try to possess but the opposition tight man marking, looking to create as many 50 50s as possible believing they’ll win most of them, has messed stuff up and been effective. USA has had to do a lot of chasing then afterwards.
So for example when we win the ball in our own 3rd in either outside channel with chance to recycle or whatever and switch the point quickly, everything’s all sped up instead after finally winning the ball back and so direct city vs. composed aggressive play to switch and make their defense have to move well aware that we just might be forced to play this way…no matter what the plan, and we still have to win.
I don’t think the USWNT is used to some of these things above re. losing 50 50s and having to chase so much and it’s affecting decision making, maybe even trying to do too much individually instead of all together
Vlatko’ s had some time, he’s got a little more to get this straightened out so their minds are right
Why do you think?
Hey Rick, meant this as a reply to you
What do you think, not why…excuse me, wrong button
Has the USWNT ever heard of switching the field? My God they were so predictable and trying to force it through so many defenders.
how many passes can they take to get it A to B. have they heard of a skip pass? a switch? let the ball do the work?
Rapinoe was atrocious. One of the all time stinkers.
I blame youth soccer-no joy, abuse the referees, parents putting pressure on coaches to win, coaches not educating parents about the difference between winning and development.
Despite what the club teams say, they always take winning the next U10 game over development i.e. putting the biggest kid at forward and kicking the ball in his/her direction. Ugly soccer for sure.
Agree with much
But no way let the refs off the hook. They allow thug ball. Period.
At surf cup this weekend, U16 game, a girl grabbed another by the neck with both hands, threw her to the ground, and slapped her face.
It went unpunished
But one example.
If the refs force a thug game how can the players play?
The officiating is the biggest weakness in player development
The team has enough returning vets that they should be doing better. Instead, they seem really out of sync. The young ones like Smith and Rodman have been largely invisible instead of budding stars like a lot of people projected. The team underperforms and the coach makes no changes. He must bear a lot of the blame for the poor performances. Yes, other teams are a lot better than they used to be, but this US team is not performing near as well as past US teams, regardless of opposition. I don’t see them winning their next game and the team needs a new coach.
i would be concerned for the US’ future as the old unit continues to hollow out. pretty soon this is smith lavelle horan’s team. imagine this minus morgan rapinoe.
they were better in the second half countering and going straight to goal through lavelle who would try and thread one. the issue first half was they just lofted crosses to non-target morgan all day. this is a dribble and speed team that needs to stop fighting its nature. if a ball is lofted in they’d be better off trapping it and flicking it off. they do nothing trying to volley and little trying to head.
lavelle being out on cards hurts. i see that as a symptom of us no longer being above and beyond our group where we don’t have to tackle and fight.
i can’t believe the 2000s team picture of USWNT in the stands watched that quietly and meekly and won’t have anything to say to cone. surely they see what i do with players out of position, general clunkiness, disorganized team defense.
the US motto these days seems to be why make 2 passes when i can make 5, slowly. extremely predictable. for the “ball to do the work” it has to move faster than defenders can.
more i see rapinoe and lavelle were giving second half service and the frontline just isn’t up to the job. morgan was always more like a second or third chair fiddle now expected to carry this. she has some chances and she just misses them all. barely troubles the keeperthe wings are just ok.
i am not a fan of “organized diving-in” aka pressing. not fundamentally sound. and you can see the transition opportunities we routinely give up diving in. but on their near-goal it’s route 1 football up the middle. and that was not the only time they got a decent chance out of 1 or 2 on 4. i kind of think the defense just stinks.
I thought Lavelle was pretty bad. She showed value against the Dutch, but got a foolish yellow which means that because of today’s yellow she misses the next match. Her set piece deliveries, as mentioned, were just poor. Rapinoe did a better job in limited minutes. Why Lavelle kept lofting in free kicks is beyond me. After a couple of failures, you would think she might try a different type of delivery.
Women’s soccer used to be without the flopping, acting, BS male wimp tactics…and I loved them for it!!
Now the euro teams mimic the men’s with all that crap (Neville did it, Neto, endless examples).
It’s a shame imo
We’re seeing the lack of investment in women’s soccer here at home come home to roost. Thank you to all the smarty pants sad effs who fight this team and program, decry investment to help it compete as euro clubs invest.
What do any smarty pants expect to happen?
Bend it like Beckham…comevto the US to advance. Today?
And when they speak up about it, sound the alarm, etc they get hammered for it
It is easy to pile on Vlatko but he is building his own case for failure. All three opponents were more prepared to face the US. Vlatko has shown poor lineup decisions and even worse a lack of dexterity in personal decisions based on formations. They lack dexterity in on the field preparedness and shows in the players performances and reactions to how they are being defended. Opponents are ready for how the US want to play and have done an excellent job of forcing Smith wide with doubles, playing the midfielders physical, and most of all staying organized in the back. Every time Morgan got a ball as a target player she got fouled, which was maybe three times today. Everything went wide and bottled up wide.
The Rapinoe sub backfired! She was not up to the speed of the game. In the 68 and 84 minutes she had the ball and knew where she needed to pass but the unlocking passes were poorly weighted and intercepted. Her set pieces delivery was not good, although one of her corners Morgan took the ball off the head of Horan(could have been Sullivan who delivered the ball?)
I would have subbed Rodman for Morgan and pushed Williams in the middle with Smith and Rodman each side. Those through balls later in the second half could have been connected with fresh legs of Rodman or Thompson, Rapinoe is not chasing down a ball in a channel and Morgan faded.
Lack of personal in the midfield is hurting the US in linking up from the defensive third to the offensive third. Sullivan just not that dynamic. Time to slide Ertz in here spot and start Cook? Horan and Lavelle need to play better, flat out!
Dunn needs to check herself! She is usually the best athlete on the pitch but technically she is not performing. Her passing percentage has to be just over 50%. The other thing is usually has hustle moments that create opportunities but she was a non factor?
On the positive side the defense was very organized and defended well. However, when the game got stretched on the US defensive side it was the result of Ertz or Girma getting pulled out defending or Ertz dribbling into a turnover.
US needs to start playing brave with urgency but need guidance from the coaching staff. At this point talent will not pull a rabbit out a hat. Tactics are beating the US!
My thoughts as well, great post
Dunn clearly not back to form, not close, turnover machine. The advantage she brings is US does not send help to her side but the poor decisions/execution reveals her self belief still not all the way back. She’s been hard to watch and she’s been key to winning before. Team needs her to find her form asap
Smith has held the ball too long. Is that because Vlatko has told her to attack off the dribble or something else, idk, but she got hammered with some nasty fouls so maybe that affected
Rapinoe was terrible, that’s it. Can’t blame Vlatko for that. I’d go back to her but wow, poor performance
I do not understand why Lynn isn’t being used in the supersub role Vlatko praised her for, I just don’t get it. She had a great chance off her own rebound and yip city bit her too
Now no Rose (both yellows hella soft…fifa) but no excuses.
Lloyd blasting Morgan is pathetic. She needs service, and well, there has been none. Lost some respect, too personally revealing imo
And now the biggie; Lindsay being targeted for the opposition attack; they pulled American shape to make Horan defend bigger spaces and found success.
We need to score first with the flurry of opportunities created in opening 10-15 minutes. Who plays for Rose?
This USWNT needs a ragged game of speed and bully ball with tenacious D to win. Refs won’t help them and teams will continue to foul to stop counters and speed uncarded
Ok…overcome
Need to play their best game ever under Vlatko vs. Sweden
Dunn isn’t a left back. The USWNT has gotten away with playing players out of position for a long time due to them being superior athletes to the opposition. That isn’t the case anymore. Dunn shouldn’t be even playing LB. She is an attacking CM.
Dunn plays left wingback for the Thorns all the time. Big issue was Dunn could not advance the ball and have any dynamic combination with Horan, Lavelle, or Smith. Her inaccuracies passing rules out possession and advancing the ball into dangerous areas with combos, passing triangles, and through balls. The US continued to play balls to Smith and expect her to run past the defender and take on the entire back line.
I suspect Dunn was asked to maintain shape of a back four. I recall once she made a run into a dangerous area but Rapinoe turned the ball over and the US was caught out of shape with a slack of defenders.
I expect DeMelo to start in place of Lavelle. Also, expect the US to have who ever plays striker(Morgan or Williams) to try and pull defenders up field and play quick balls wide and Smith, Rodman, Williams, or Thompson to get behind defenders.
US needs to prepare for emphasizing what they are good at. What matchup can we exploit and punish? Also, hunt in packs with all three forwards creating opportunities with a high work rate pressing and spring opportune double teams.
You will learn a lot about the character of these players next match!
She’s played it on this team for years and years and years very well, left back that is
I would argue she was the MVP of last World Cup from that spot
She plays many positions well
With Rose out, we’ll see what Vlatko does
The issue that I see at the younger ages, beginning around 13 is the emphasis on playing a 4-3-3 with wingers that basically chase through balls and balls down the line with little emphasis on playing possession based soccer. It shows with the USWNT players as they are not comfortable playing in compact space compared to the Europeans or South Americans. We have gotten away with it for years by having more resources and better athletes but that time is gone.
have you seen mbappe? what’s so wrong with — for at least part of our approach — having some of our players capable of simply turning on the afterburners as opposed to creating everything the hard, methodical way? as a two-sport guy in college where the other was track, i find this whole line of argument offensive and misunderstanding soccer and progression. progression in the sense that i knew plenty of slow semi skilled U10 juggle kings who couldn’t even make their HS varsity 4 years later because they couldn’t keep up with speed of play. vs. every track-soccer double i knew had zero issues progressing through age groups into college and ironically the sole question became did they work on their skills and soccer IQ. which to me is easier. you can work on the ball all summer — i did one year in college. you cannot make a slow player fast.
you’re confused how tactics work. i see the real problem as our players are “x” — and you even seem to admit it — but we aspire to “y” ergo play “y” tactics. this is not how soccer works. this is not how 98% of NT would run their shop, they would not fight against the nature of the pool for aspirational reasons. “but i wish we were a possession team.” most teams look at the pool, see it is “x,” and hire someone as an “x” style coach, or perhaps “x+1” or “x+2” if they want to slightly push the pool along. most of the teams i encountered over the years who gave me the “play the right way” lecture finished behind me. it’s an aesthetic argument posing as an objective one. objectively soccer is in significant part a running and defense sport. and if you want to be slow and technical you better be amazingly skilled, not just kind of.
last last point, sorry but if you aspire to technical keepaway soccer you better be doing away with a list of our players or at least making them subs. mckennie is not a small spaces guy. musah, while a tank and good defender, is not stu holden. you need reyna, pulisic, green, etc. actually technical people to execute technical soccer.
personally i find it amusing people adore GB as “possession soccer” paragon, because what i see is a team that can’t decide what it is. if it’s a transition team or a tiki-taka team. the press says transition. the F and MF choices say press. the timidity says tiki taka. the MF does not say tiki taka.
worse, none of the fanboys seem to see the contradiction between the dribbling virtuosity we often speak of wanting, and tiki-taka ideas where one passes the ball 5 beats too early as keepaway. pep often wasn’t sure what to do with messi because messi wanted to end the “passing for the sake of passing,” take a risk, dribble someone, and go to net. that there is the contradiction of this in a nutshell. possession soccer is about tempo and angles. dribbling is not possession. dribbling is risking losing it to go right to goal. i personally favor chances over possession, defensive soundness over gimmicks. i don’t think the fanboys see the possession ideas make this more timid not less so. as a defender i never minded teams that knocked it around but didn’t go to goal. so what. you’re not scoring on me not trying to. i’ll wait for you to make a mistake and then counter you. with the speed guys you hate. and we won’t give you a chance to take a breath, and pass and pass and pass to make some point. straight to goal. try and stop me. i think the world is actually going my direction and not yours — france, argentina, morocco, japan, holland.
based on what i saw, the US seemed content to settle for lofted crosses, which didn’t work. and morgan, who is not a target player, just tried headers and first time volleys. she would even have a weak angle and a player on her back and instead of bringing it down and turning, she’d try some 1-in-1,000 shot that would go wide or be saved or she’d foul their keeper. they weren’t really playing the ground crosses of the first two games.
you’re confusing the fact we got yet again 4v3’d in the MF with our MF being donkeys. they collapsed their diamond on the center 3.
we mentioned the stay-at-home backs last game — when i think they were needed — but when you play an opponent with 4 backs and then 4 players collapsing middle, the joy would have been wide. adjust the formation to add mids or pull the wingbacks up. switch it faster. either that or play over the top but in the US these days that is anathema. we will whack lofted crosses all day but far be it from us to simply send the Fs in the same fashion. it has to be slow build ground play…..until the final third!!
to me the attack they have all sorts of players out of position and dumb tactics, but they have some quality beneath it. the backline to me is just plain sketchy, and i see no 6 whatsoever. we also tend to have massive spaces between the lines in transition. maybe because the MF is more an attacking unit than a defending one.
Yikes. The USWNT looks more out of sync with each game. When even Morgan and Rapinoe couldn’t connect a simple square pass late in the game, I decided this team is going to be lucky to get the draw and advance. Then the Portugal shot off the post in stoppage….
We are seeing two things happening simultaneously. One is the mismanagement of a still highly talented US team, but one that has no cohesion. The younger attacking players should have been elevated to play more USWNT minutes 2-3 years ago, not a couple months ago. Also, the formation/lineup/tactics have not worked, and yet almost no changes were made over the three games. The other thing happening is how much better the European womens teams have become, quite rapidly. That aspect of women’s soccer will only continue. Soon we’ll be talking about how our most talented women’s players need to go to Europe…
for a long time we were the traveling circus training together yearround and getting 30 games a year like a league team when everyone else was playing 10-15 games a year in a handful of camps around an amateur or college schedule. kind of akin to US men U20 or U23 around 1990-2000.
just like U20/U23 the women’s game has professionalized. it’s no longer like a “once every 4 years” olympic type event where some of the entries are a joke. there are now several pro leagues. those pro leagues benefit more than just the domestic players. you can’t just show up and beat teams because you’re the pros and they are like amateurs.
i agree re personnel. to me seniority for its own sake is a problem across the men and women. one of the reasons i want to start with experiments beginning of cycle is we need a more “open” position competition where it’s not assumed who gets to be the starter before it even begins.
the tactics are stupid. we play lofted balls in like we have akers in the middle or something. we have a speed player in the middle. either put horan 9 or keep the ball on the ground and sit deeper where we can get behind opponents.
the defense seems to have been picked for offense. they are not that dominant. the world has caught up.
For those insomniacs like me who may have caught the post game, Carli Lloyd for President…
Any of us who follow the women’s game since the 2019 WWC and beyond could see this day coming. Both the Netherlands and Portugal outplayed the US, and only a couple of inches saved us from an early exit. Our next opponent, Sweden, dropped a 3-0 loss on this team in the Olympics. England, Germany and Spain (who lost 4-0 to Japan a couple of days ago) have beaten this US team in the last year, all of whom will likely be in the knockout rounds. We were confident when our entire roster had the advantage of full-time professionals, but that is no longer the case. Look for the USSF to crank up the feeder system after this team bows out.
i was at a loss why they brought back a guy who couldn’t beat australia in the quarters in tokyo. that is even less explicable than berhalter. this is one of the reason i worry about the fanboys playing up every friendly or baby tournament. this is the part that really matters.
Time for Vlatko to shake things up for the knock out rounds. Put Johnston in midfield. I would argue Smith needs to play at CF not on the wing. Something needs to change.
I would also add that this is a result of the continued absence of true academies for the women’s side. Who continue to use the College system for development. The women’s U20’s haven’t been good for many cycles now. The rest of the world has caught up especially Europe due to more money pumping into programs and the use of academy systems.
Yup. In fairness the money hasn’t really been there for the women’s side. When the likes of Arsenal or Chelsea or Barcelona decide to invest in a women’s academy system they’ve got the infrastructure and financial heft to go large; MLS cannot fill that void yet in America because it’s still establishing itself, and the women’s pro sides in the US are on a shoestring budget in comparison to Europe’s big clubs.
I’m not looking forward to it, but bowing out early in this tournament and then the game in America riding the wave of popularity that’s about to ensue in the US thanks to Copa America and then the World Cup on the men’s side is probably going to be the impetus it’ll take to get the women’s game the finances it needs to develop its own talent like the big Euro clubs do. We still have a massive edge in raw talent – almost all of the elite female athletes in this country play soccer at some point and so we have a ton more young talent than anybody else – but as you pointed out, if the Academy system just isn’t there….
nonsense. you’re just arguing “xerox europe.” pfffft. there are, what, 2 decent leagues in europe? england and france. please. that doesn’t explain holland and portugal. you’re pretending it’s like the men when it isn’t. spain finished second in their group to japan.
also, we have teenagers going from club into NWSL first teams. NWSL being a top 3 league in the world.
explain to me why academies are the issue? do those teens need to give up their NWSL playing time and go back and play U17 academy ball? pfffft
the real problem i see is the coaching. i don’t know if we should win this whole thing but this is being handed quality and turning it into a mess. morgan is not a target striker. we have lots of speed but play like a 90s EPL team, crosses all day. the MF has no 6. the backs who on earth picked them.
want more pointed? who the heck is vlatko? how do you keep a job after blowing the olympics in the quarters with an elderly backline that couldn’t stop my great grandmother? both men’s and women’s we now seem to hire coaches on the cheap, not even our best domestics, with weird ideas.
@2tone, total agreement. Compared to the 2019 WWC, we are witnessing a very noticeable increase in talent from those countries close in parity to the US or a notch below the US. I had the US stack-ranked tied for 4th at the start of the WWC, and now realize that was too generous. This US team is playing below their potential, but we also witnessed Netherlands and Portugal outplay this team, and there are teams above them that would result in a mismatch.
After the US is sent home (probably Sweden), the USSF is going to send Vlatko packing, realize they need to change course and find way to invest in a youth pipeline. The NWSL cannot afford it, so something will have to give.