The U.S. women’s national team suffered its earliest exit at a FIFA Women’s World Cup on Sunday and although pressure will be on the federation to consider a head coaching change, Vlatko Andonovski isn’t focused on his future at this time.
Andonovski watched as his USWNT squad dominated the offensive chances on Sunday in a Round of 16 showdown with Sweden before eventually suffering elimination 5-4 in a penalty shootout. Sweden goalkeeper Zećira Mušović made 11 saves to lead the way for the Swedes before Lina Hurtig scored the deciding penalty kick after several misses for both teams.
The result capped off an underwhelming World Cup tournament for the Americans, who saw their chances of earning a third-straight title come to a painful end. Andonovski who managed the USWNT to a Bronze Medal at the 2021 Summer Olympics, needed a strong run at the World Cup to truly save himself from being replaced as head coach.
Andonovski would surely want another chance to get the USWNT back on track, but wasn’t ready to talk about his immediate future.
“I think it’s selfish to think about me, my future, what I’m gonna do, when we have 20-year-old players going through the moment, going through this situation,” Andonovski said postmatch. “I want be there for them [USWNT]. I love them. I love them all. And they’re my players, but they’re my friends.
“We spent four years together,” he added. “They got their first caps with me. They got their first national team call-ups with me. We spend times, tough times, good times. So I don’t want to see them like that. That’s all I think about.”
Andonovski took over as USWNT head coach in 2019 after the second of two-straight tournament triumphs and only lost five of his 65 matches in charge of the program. However, the underwhelming run in Australia and New Zealand could’ve been the final straw in the 46-year-old’s stint as head coach.
The USWNT inched its way into the knockout round after tying Portugal 0-0 while also needing a second-half comeback to tie the Netherlands 1-1 in its second group stage match. Young players like Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman will be the future stars of the program, but replacing veterans such as Megan Rapinoe, Julie Ertz, and potentially others could be hard in the next cycle.
Whether or not U.S. Soccer decides to keep Andonovski remains unknown, but the current head coach believes an early cup elimination will prove important in the USWNT’s future success..
“I never came into this job, never came in the locker room with the mindset or do something to save my job,” Andonovski said. “I was always focused on doing my job in the best possible manner to prepare this team for the challenges that they have in front and to prepare them to represent our country in the best possible manner. That was the only thing that was in my focus.
“This group of players, obviously, they’re hurt in the moment, and it’s a tough moment,” he added. “It’s a tough moment for them. It’s a tough moment for the staff, it’s a tough moment for everyone. But in same time, I know that they will use this moment as a motivation, and not to go through the same thing ever again.”
The USWNT now has a lengthy break before hosting South Africa in mid-September in a pair of home friendlies.
BYE BYE!!
he has it backwards, it’s selfish to not look at him and everything else. or, put different, it’s not selfish for us to consider him.
I don’t think that’s what he meant. I think he’s just saying immediately after elimination isn’t the time for him to focus on his future. He’s just thinking about his players getting through the emotion of it. He knows what’s coming, but he knows they’ll be time for that in a few days.
dude, we just went out in the round of 16. how long do we need to think about this? 6 months? a year? do you remember how long the most recent navel gaze lasted?
and we ended up with the same crap coach? the decision should already have been under consideration before the game began based on how bad group went, carli lloyd, etc. get er done and let’s move forward. this corporate crap isn’t working. is it sufficient? no. gone. done. next.
i am amused by pretending like the purple hair led team is so media shy they need quiet time to mourn. be real. i am waiting for the leaks, the behind the scenes tick tock, to hit our press explaining this from their end. soon. he is using them and his spinny words as an accountability shield. “but the children.” pfffft. if lloyd is already getting chatty it’s a matter of time before we hear what more of the rest think.
i am sure he would love to drag this out and see if USSF starts clutching pearls on their fainting couch again about what change might mean, or might cost. that when one of the people i just mentioned gets chatty, he can make them into his reyna smoke screen and escape. they played 4 games and managed to grind out VN. this is “the easiest decision in the history of decisions” as the commercial sez. and they don’t have our inferiority complexes where it’s like “do i deserve more” (when it comes to hiring someone, in either sporting or financial terms) while talking a big game about aspiring to bigger things.
no, i get he’s talking about the girls, but he’s actually being insincere about selfishness. he’s sneakily saying put off the decision on me and let the women mourn, which can be quite selfish in reality, regardless what his rhetoric claims. if he was selfless he’d have quit already. it took bruce, what, 3 days to quit after couva?
I’m all for coaches that fall on the sword and take all the blame, but how many resign on the spot? Bruce only left when it was made clear to him he wasn’t going to be extended. Vlatko will likely do the same in the coming days when the same is made clear to him (contract expires at the end of the year). I couldn’t find when Kate Markgraf’s contract runs though but I wouldn’t be surprised to see change there as well. In 2019 Grant Wahl said Vlatko, Laura Harvey, Paul
Riley (now banned for life in NWSL for player abuse), and Mark Krikorian (who has moved to front office). Harvey a likely front runner but they’ll want to find some new names as well.
oh i don’t doubt that some of these coaches don’t immediately quit in the locker room, expect their contract balance, are pushed, quietly handed a lump sum of their remaining salary and told to skedaddle, and we’ll let you say you quit in lieu of announcing you’re fired. this happens often enough i want you to justify to me why we need to hold same fake inquest in a month or two on his future or let him coach more games. i mean, we haven’t finished worse than 3RD in any WWC ever since it started 30 years ago. think about this like you have the french men and you go out round of 16 next time, if it helps.
when did USSF start picking coaches out of the value-bin at KMart? if you want to be world class hire world class. eg pia. the recent penchant for trying to get cute, both teams, has not garnered cute results. we have not shown we are more clever than the average bear on tactics, coaching, GM work, etc.
last point but if you bring in a GM and the corporate hiring process takes disturbingly long, and the sausage coming out the other end tastes bad, then i don’t think we need a GM. we need to go back to “hire a coach in 2 weeks.” pick who we really want, offer their agent a number. we were getting better people that way. the flynn debacle can be resolved a lot easier than it has been. if you’re in hospital you lose the hire/fire privileges. done. resolved. that was the primary problem on klinsi was the firing delay. second problem to me seems to be not so much “arena” specifically as some sort of recent fetish for hiring cheap domestic coaches. in the big picture, who is berhalter? vlatko? they are come-downs from the quality level we have usually had. it’s cute. it’s cheaper. it’s not working. do something else.
IV: I don’t think it will take that long given that Olympics are next summer. Vlatko has probably coached his final match. I think they’ll probably wait for the WC to end but I highly doubt he’s on the sidelines in Sept. friendlies. I’m not really sure what you mean by bargain bin shopping. The difference between Euro clubs and NWSL is not large like with MLS. Many of the coaches of big clubs in Europe have also coached in NWSL/WPS or played in US. You always have that aspect of some club managers just don’t want to coach NTs and not have a day to day challenge. The best NT coaches are busy right now so in two weeks when the WC is over things should pick up.
(1) a great deal of the excuses i hear men’s side revolve around ideas of what we can afford. pouty notions that berhalter is all we can afford. the essential argument seems to be we can no longer afford elite eg klinsi types (or mourinho or zidane). and then the MLS choice is usually not the best resume guy, it’s some second rate value guy who once made a final 5 years ago.
(2) you’re then expecting some second rate value guy to beat deschamps or the like, good luck with that.
(3) england’s WNT now pays their coach i think like 50-100% more than we do. $1.5m i think. our salary is more with the pack now.
(4) vlatko to me is the equivalent of berhalter. he isn’t even the best NWSL guy. he had a run with KC about a decade ago. handed seattle he didn’t replicate. he too got hired about a half decade after his supposed peak which like berhalter suggests someone was holding onto an old war over who to hire at a previous juncture.
(5) if you look at recent hiring trends in NCAA, some men’s teams are hiring women. several in D1 and i think a woman coach even won the men’s D3 title. i bring this up because i think you’re assuming an artificially narrow candidate pool. we already have a man coaching women. which, well, is accepted. but you could take some risk and cold-call some men’s pro coaches who are probably better than a junky cheap women’s coach pool of average league coaches. bradley, matarazzi, marsch, kreis, veras, etc. plus available foreign choices. if we’re already interviewing men why not call up the good ones. why are the options narrowed to some guy with an ok resume of short success streak who for most of his career had never left greater KC???
(6) it’s already august, so you have “weeks” to hire to have them be able to select september and meaningfully plan practices and games. you can do it the corporate CYA EEOC way and take months to decide if he’s fired and work your way through resumes and interviews just to pretend everyone is fully considered, and come up with a lousy committee choice, or you can get aggressive now and do something like you’re serious and upset.
to be crystal clear, i get women aren’t men’s level. it’s like an age group or 2 difference downward in terms of skill and speed. but our men’s NCAA assistant (and brief interim head) slid over as the women’s coach after i graduated, i think he was conference coach of the year once, most wins ever, tied for winning percentage in the program. soccer’s soccer.
Still can’t understand the lack of subs. The USMNT had a definite dropoff in talent past the starting 11 and I still thought Gregg should have subbed and rotated more. Games played at that intensity are going to tire players and affect performance, especially as the games add up and are played every 4th day or so. The USWNT was supposed to be deep and full of talent, yet I can only think of two subs (Lavelle at the half in group stage, and Williams for Rodman against Sweden) that was made with enough time to make a difference in 4 games! So did he not really believe in the depth and didn’t trust the bench? And the need to change how the USWNT attacked was obvious even in the pre-tournament friendlies. Whether by player selection or formation/tactics, something needed tweaked. We can say they were unlucky to go out the way they did against Sweden, but the problem of not creating enough quality chances and finishing was a theme throughout the summer. Take away the weak team from Vietnam and they only scored 1 goal in the other 3 games, that is a trend.
If you don’t think this is significantly Vlatko’s fault you’re fooling yourself. From roster selection, subbing patterns, trying new players throughout his tenure, wasting 2 years of the cycle on players past their prime at the Olympics, lack of any semblance of a tactical identity or cohesion. Certainly he was unlucky to lose Swanson and Macario. Yes this team but for an inch or two could have be undefeated and in the quarterfinals right now, but they just as easily could have gone out to Portugal. Vlatko had a pedigree, he’d meet The Imperative Voice’s demand of winning championships. Perhaps not all successful club managers have the skills to have the same success in the international game.
JR, I suspect a lot more went into roster selections than building the best team. Because I like statistics and was curious: 18 -22: 3 players; 23-28: 8 players; 29+: 12 players. Pretty good chance who gets a share of the prize money from Qatar was a factor.
I try not to believe in conspiracies. Vlatko and Rapinoe were together at OL Reign. It wasn’t drastically different from the Olympics minus the retirements which was before the agreement. It does make you wonder some. I wonder how that works. Have the men just been waiting for their WC bonuses for this tournament to end?
except we were the reigning champ or have you forgotten this is the women and not the men. or are you trying to say men’s expectations are ok for the women now? cause last time i saw we had a talented bunch of men and we can’t beat anyone any good in europe, which is regression from the 2000-15 period, and which gets defended behind similar notions this has decayed and is no longer the same. how many years of project excuses are we going to make for the women now? the men have history, the women have history, this doesn’t live up to minimum women’s expectations. much less the routine titles.
you bring up pedigree, what is his? he won the domestic league middle of last decade. they love him in MO/KC. it’s kind of like the weird mid 2010s berhalter obsession.
this is not dorrance, dicicco, april,, pia, jill, that level. he’s ok. ok used to get sermanni fired the night HE WON A GAME. you can make fun all you want but they used to be laser focused on do you win me the title or not. does this look well run or not. i think this one was obvious years ago. are we going back to old ways or are we gonna start watering down things at the same time as we talk like we need to fix some things. i get he’s not the only problem but that was a coaching mess from start to finish. can we make the easy decisions? it’s gonna be far more work to figure out development and the rest. this is the low hanging fruit. you’re obviously not the guy.
Read my first line “ If you don’t think this is significantly Vlatko’s fault you’re fooling yourself”. Vlatko fit your baseline he was a proven winner. He couldn’t get the best out of a roster that unlike the men had more talent than anyone they played. A week ago you were defending Vlatko saying well “our talent has eroded what could he do” after the Netherlands game. No he just couldn’t use them correctly.
no, sorry, “vlatko” is not the same thing as “pia.” we used to poach the reigning champion coach and not just some rando. i don’t consider a year in KC “winning” at the level the women have usually hired and deserve. i also think you are confusing the nature of the flynn rule. winning a league once doesn’t get you the job. it allows you to be considered at all. it is the “minimum qualifications” line on a job ad where your resume isn’t tossed in the circular file. it is not the “preferred qualifications” line that says what you really want. my argument on the flynn rule is in service of subjectivity and projects and optimism we have watered down the objective resume items we demand from hirees. in effect, watered down the pool and the winner. snobs have fun at bruce and bob’s expense. bruce and bob accomplished things. years of college titles or overperformance. won a title with an expansion team. won a few. and you see where maybe even that only gets us so far. so, think about it, do i need more coach than that, or less? obviously more. and yet we hire less and less. and then i get to hear, oh, but he won once in KC. yeah, the team kind of looks like they hired a guy who won a league title once upon a time in his adopted hometown.
to be crystal clear what i said — i said the tactics stunk and the positioning choices stunk, and i also said the personnel was weaker. both can be true. i buy this wasn’t going to be our tournament. i also think the coach was zero value added beyond the team out on the field, played people out of position, played a silly formation and tactics. if i have to remind you, you made fun of me as a 433 hater. so clearly it was about more than players and i said as much.
IV: Vlatko has won 2 NWSL titles not one an indoor title and a national youth club title. You are right he’s not Pia because Sundhage hadn’t won anything as a manager before she was hired. She really only has a silver medal with Sweden since. Jill Ellis had some PAC 10 titles but no NCAA titles or titles on the pro or international level. She was a career assistant.
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We agree Vlatko wasn’t up to it and needs to go the sooner the better but you’re inventing history to fit your narrative.
Clarification: Ellis was only an assistant at international \ pro level before being hired.
you’re giving me grief about dismissing vlatko’s “big” accomplishment, while leaving out a huge chunk of ellis’ history. ellis made the NCAA final, finished second, was voted national coach of the year. ellis worked her way up from the U20/U21 teams, to being a senior team assistant when they won the olympics.
re your complaints at leaving off “indoor,” once MLS started that’s a backwater roughly even with low level USL or what used to be PDL. few teams, few players, limited geographical coverage. i had an offer to try out for one and what i heard paychecks weren’t arriving on time and the team soon folded. and your youth championship example might have qualified him to be a college coach or coach a YNT. i thought we were seriously discussing what qualifies you to coach the WNT.
if we were hiring a woman’s coach i’d say someone like bompastor, herdman, harvey. i know herdman has a 26 deal with canada men but they can barely afford the lights on it sounds like. and then my outside of the box ideas of men’s program coaches.
Herdman would never coach the US, his passion for beating us is too great. Plus his tactics are basic, similar to Vlatko he thinks he can just out athlete people. Works in Concacaf but not so much on the international stage.
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So Ellis who never won anything with YNTs or any pro titles was accomplished enough but Vlatko wasn’t. The point was he had won at every level he’d been at, he was a proven winner. His roster selection and tactics at the Olympics should have had him out then, but we just got more of the same at the WC.
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You completely forgot Pia who you highlighted who never won anything before or since as your gold standard “he’s no Pia”. Which by the way no one said in the first place.
Does he understand that you can use subs in regular time.
No doubt he is gone.
A really awful coaching job overall. Not that I’m that much of an expert and maybe I’m unaware of a lot of other issues. But as a UNC alumnus I’ve long been a women’s soccer follower and remember the crowd at the 1991 Women’s World Cup final in China chanting “Tar Heels” as the first ever Women’s World Cup Championship drew to a close.
I get that the rest of the world has come a loooooooooong way since 1991. But for this coach to take over a 2x world champion and “lead” them to bronze at the Olympics, a variety of head-scratching losses, and then this debacle on the worlds biggest stage …..
Unacceptable.