The U.S. women’s national team closed its September schedule with a second-consecutive shutout victory as Megan Rapinoe’s international career came to a close.
Trinity Rodman and Emily Sonnett both scored for Twila Kilgore’s squad in a 2-0 victory over South Africa in Chicago. Rapinoe started and played 54 minutes at Soldier Field in her final appearance for the USWNT.
Rodman propelled the USWNT in front after 18 minutes as the young forward finished off Alex Morgan’s assist in the box. It marked the second-straight match that Rodman found the back of the net for the USWNT.
https://x.com/USWNT/status/1706066153213170143?s=20
Sonnett doubled the USWNT’s lead in the 49th minute after heading home in the box from a corner kick. Rapinoe’s corner kick was punched away by South African goalkeeper Andile Dlamini, but Sonnett rose highest to flick the ball into the back of the net.
https://x.com/USWNT/status/1706080402207658369?s=20
Rapinoe was substituted off in the 54th minute, receiving a standing ovation from the Chicago faithful as Midge Purce replaced her.
Rodman rattled the crossbar later in the second half while Purce’s rebound attempt was saved by Dlamini.
South Africa offered little in the final third over the 90 minutes as USWNT goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher didn’t need to make a single save in the shutout victory.
The USWNT will return to action in October with a pair of home friendlies against Colombia.
Your point about “sloppy wide speed” hit the bullseye. The thing about that is all of our sloppy wide players are professionals who have the ability to tighten up the ship and improve their game. Mallory Swanson, for example, was a dreadful underperformer up until this year when she turned lethal. Yet self correcting is not going to happen if the incumbents on the team fear no consequences of allowing their game to stagnate. What kind of message does it send that we sub in Rapinoe in a world cup elimination match when all evidence shows that she is no longer capable of playing at such a high level? Competition for positions is the underpinning of every sport and success will not come without it.
As an anecdote when Pete Carroll was coach of USC, during spring practice, he would show his returning players the highlight reels of the incoming freshmen class. As a Bruin fan I am no fan of Cheety Petey but I admire the philosophy.
What message does it send? It sends the message that Vlatko doesn’t work here anymore. However, the new person is a few weeks to month away (although once the men got to this small of list it happened in a few days) so no one is there to make sweeping changes. Most of the players in NZ will be in Paris because they are our best players, the new manager just needs to organize them better and play them in ways to make them more successful.
to me it’s what they were trying to do wasn’t working and yet there is little change made so far. to me they have already tried sloppy fast wings trying to set up the ok morgan at 9, with the technical but glacial horan orchesstrating. going through horan this is too predictable. going wide it’s not accurate enough. and the whole offense shouldn’t be funneling to morgan. and yet none of that concept changed. and we burned 2 friendlies giving veterans who just got a world cup sendoff, a further sendoff. and letting them take kicks and otherwise shove kids aside some more. without even getting into rapinoe’s quality or role, when NCAA teams have spring soccer and you are a graduating senior, you aren’t playing anymore. you don’t waste minutes on aggrandizing the finished players. you need to figure out who plays their position and who will take free kicks and corners.
and, yeah, every year in NCAA i was either trying to take an upperclassman’s job or they had a new recruit in trying to take mine. i think competition for competition’s sake can be overrated, but the tactics and personnel need to be changed and this wasn’t enough movement that way. most of the key cogs were back and in their usual places.
i disagree with JR on this. yes, there is no new coach. but i think you should be using friendlies in productive fashion. so try some wrinkles and see what happens. if the team responds to certain personnel choices or tactics, that might help inform who we hire or the future direction. like having a guest player on your select team for a tournament weekend. he can’t play league that season but maybe he can join the team next year. some people make a lot of excuses for doing nothing after a team does fairly mediocre or bad.
The fact that Rapinoe was allowed to play (i.e., walk around the pitch) for 54 minutes and that the majority of the faces on the team were basically the same old same old shows that the US Soccer pooh-bahs have no intention of changing their policy of giving their marketing department control of the roster. Couldn’t they have had just one testimonial match for both Ertz and Rapinoe and give each a half? If they were interested in winning the Olympics which are less than a year away that would have been a no-brainer. The USSF, however, is only interested in milking every dollar out of their crew of has-beens and kicking the can down the road.
You’ve got your 4 best offensive players in Smith, Macario, Lavelle, and Swanson out with injuries. The manager is an interim with no shot at taking over so that’s not the person to implement sweeping change. Like her or not Rapinoe changed women’s sports in America so if she wants to take some free kicks in a friendly who cares.
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The lesson learned from Aus/NZ seemed to be we can’t just win anymore with arrogance and athleticism. The women’s team has always been slow to change over its roster, in the past because of the salary structure. That’s gone but the pool for women players is so much smaller there’s about 1/3 as many pro teams in NWSL as MLS and very few players play in good leagues oversees. You aren’t going to see this giant cleaning out of the roster like we did with the men after 2018. A there aren’t enough good players and B losing in penalties in the first round of knockouts isn’t not qualifying. Get a good manager by December get the best players healthy we are still in the drivers seat for the Olympics and WC.
sorry dude but if you go back to 2018 the no-hoper sarachan auditioned a lot of the future core of the team before GB had a sniff of the place and shipped several back down to U23 only to be his starters come qatar. you can even argue sarachan had diagnosed some of the problems eg jedi getting countered on. there is information to be had and we arguably over-aggrandize the coaches’ role in it all.
to me what just happened was vlatko’s fired hands getting to still run the joystick on into the fall. we have a finite amount of games between now and paris and just burned 2 fairly uselessly other than results.
i also disagree with your timeframe premises. if you have paris ambitions you need to reboot it rapidly. i wouldn’t be surprised if they are conservative with 1 year to do it. i also wouldn’t be surprised if it stinks nearly as bad if they go that direction, as the poor big picture results are now fairly consistent. to me they have to be very aggressive if they want to make a splash in paris, and their real goal should be 4 years down the road at home next WWC. all the O-30s should be retired to their local co-ed leagues because a team funneling to morgan isn’t winning paris or the next WWC.
per usual you are operating on the premise the teams are properly selected and the coach doing fine even when the results strongly suggest otherwise. i defer to winners. i am sure they have it sorted at least somewhat. i do not defer to whatever this summer was. and it’s a waste of time to let his hand still be effectively on the wheel by not moving this forward in his absence.
In both matches against South Africa, the first since the WWC, we saw little of a rebuilding effort of the talent pipeline. The rosters had a couple of new faces, and a couple of cameo appearances. While some fans are happy for the send-off for Julie Ertz (who stopped playing right after the WWC) and today Rapinoe, the women’s program seems to lack the urgency and rebuild commitment in contrast to the men’s program. Hopefully new leadership will make a difference.
i am skeptical of change. i think we are taken over by a cult. crocker’s role with england was to enforce a playing style across age groups. that does not strike me as the man you hire to supervise letting tactical flowers bloom. after england he went to saints where they rode the high press cult over the cliff into the championship right alongside leeds, and saints are currently sitting 15th in the second division, we then hired our men’s coach back. the women started multiple 30 year olds, had a retiring player taking their dead balls, and an interim coach. i get lectured for suggesting an actual good coach, or risk-taking ideas.
on a personnel level, starting morgan at striker and horan as a mid, as well as the emphasis on sloppy wide speed, suggests to me a continued lack of examination of why they are stuck where they are, and ertz and rapinoe reflected the ego of a team that doesn’t seem to grasp it is under a year to go. i assume part of their struggle is they badly want to chase the olympics even though common sense is freshen the team, point to WWC 27, and if they trip over a surprise good unit and tactics maybe have a run next year. but if they don’t shake things up this coming year then they won’t medal or have any traction towards 27 when we might be hosts. [we might be at the beginning of a sequence of tournament hosting that is mindboggling…..GC/NL 23 CA 24 club world cup 25 men’s world cup 26 WWC 27…..curious if we host GC 25 if that all is the case…….]. but anyhow, strikes me as “dim” to be trying to squeeze a paris medal with some veterans USWNT when the obvious target for a team this old and mediocre and soon to host is…..their event.
it is amusing we have dunn and krueger starting in their 30s because it radiates dunning-kruger effect. crocker seems to think he is upon the magic beans. ask a saints fan if they still think so…..