For the first time since London 2012, the United States women’s national team will be playing in an Olympic soccer final.
The USWNT earned a second consecutive 1-0 extra-time victory courtesy of Sophia Smith’s late heroics in Tuesday’s semifinal triumph over Germany. Emma Hayes’ squad will meet Brazil in the Gold Medal match on Saturday in Paris.
The best chances for the USWNT came early through a free point-blank header for Tierna Davidson and a shooting opportunity for Rose Lavelle on the counterattack but both finishes were hit straight at Germany goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger.
Rather than Alyssa Naeher needing to match her counterpart, centerback Naomi Girma made a few crucial tackles, most notably in the tenth minute, to prevent her goalkeeper from being forced into difficult saves.
As the game flow settled throughout the half, the chance creation faded through the physicality of the match exemplified by the USWNT suffering 11 fouls — the most by any team in a half in the 2024 Olympics.
The same continued throughout the second half as Germany found success playing through the USWNT in the center of the park but struggled to find their final product. Similarly, the Americans turned their dominant possession into shots and threatening wing play but not particularly dangerous chances.
Defensively, the Americans allowed fewer opportunities for their opponent but also struggled to produce the same opportunities for themselves in attack which they had in the 4-1 group stage win over Germany.
As a result, after both teams pushed through an extra 30 minutes in their quarterfinal matchups, they had to do it again with the semifinal headed to extra-time still scoreless.
Again, the Americans needed a hero and just as they have done all tournament, the star-studded attacking trio answered the bell.
Following in Trinity Rodman’s quarterfinal footsteps, Smith stepped up when her team needed her most, running with everything she had to beat Berger and a German defender to Mallory Swanson’s through ball pass before getting the vital touch to flick the ball beyond both into the back of the net.
Together, the trident has now scored nine of eleven USWNT goals in the tournament, of course, with three goals each.
“Honestly I don’t remember anything that just happened,” Smith attempted to recall her goal postgame. “I know Mal played me a perfect ball through. I just saw an open net in front of me and knew that I had to step up in a big moment. I felt like I had to do that for this team.”
Still, the USWNT needed to hold off a chasing German side for another 25 minutes.
Naeher was the one to step up to answer that question in the 119th minute with a stellar kick-save to deny Laura Freigang a last-minute equalizer and win the Olympic semifinal for the Americans.
IV: I did some digging on salaries in women’s leagues. It appears that USA and England are pretty similar. The WSL in England has lower minimums but top players make about the same. I couldn’t find the averages for France, Spain, or Germany but top players for Barcelona and Lyon make comparable salaries to top players in NWSL and WSL.
Congrats to the USWNT for getting to the final, and they have had to work for it! I’m not gonna harp on the lack of subbing again, except to say that I really hope they have something left for the final. Girma MVP. I may be in the minority here on this, but just not sold on the front three. I still feel like Smith and Rodman are the same player, both excellent 1v1 but neither can combine well enough for a fluid offense. Rodman, at least, shows improvement with her cutback crosses after getting to the endline, and she has the occasional magic to win games. Smith, whose speed and skill I admire, continuously makes the wrong decision when on the ball. I lost count of how many times she missed runners, or played the wrong pass, or most frequently, tried to dribble thru multiple defenders only to lose the ball. She’s young, so hopefully her soccer IQ will improve. Swanson seemed like a much more sophisticated player in the earlier games, but haven’t seen as much the last two. Maybe fatigue catching up? Lavelle hasn’t been herself either, doesn’t seem in sync with the front three at all. Looks like a team in transition, credit to them for getting the results.
jb,
The front three are promising but pretty inexperienced.
Hayes did the right thing in clearing a path for their development by leaving Alex home.
She is the past, these three are the future and the future is now.
They need as much time together in these tough games, as they can get. So I’m all for playing them together as much as humanly possible. So far, the gamble is paying off.
New manager, new players. Hayes doesn’t have time to ease into this so everyone is going to have to learn together right away.
What I like is that Hayes has a sense of urgency and clearly understands how important winning is something the men know nothing about. The USWNT used to expect to win every game. Hayes seems to be looking to bring back that attitude.
Great game, Germany had very little yall! Popp, who started as CF, to begin her career with Germany, has been playing defensive midfield. If she was playing, the result is still the same. I’ve watch all the games on USA or NBC. (I don’t like mentioning other networks). Guaranteed a better medal than last Olympics. Rose Lavelle & Horan? Pick 1 coach! Both cannot exist, they are both situational players. Rose it’s a lot of usage & wear & tear for her age. Horan has overall foot speed problems. Horan is out of position when the ball turns over and she has to play defense. Rose can keep up with the front 3, offensively but is a liability defensively. You put both in the same midfield and you get what you see in this match. No one world is beating Emily Fox consistently; just like Crystal Dunn under Jill Ellis. Yes, players have bad games. Yes, players make mistakes. Mallory stinks as a 10, or 2nd striker. Holy Kreis! There was a lot of selfishness front the front 3 in this match also. Long shots instead of 30 or 60 degrees passes in the box to teammates says hero ball to me. Germany was offside on Naeher’s save. Last match, I like Lynn Williams start at CF, have Swanson at LW, & Shaw at RW. I would like to see Rodman & Smith off the bench to close out the game, move Swanson back to CF when those 2 come on. Nighswonger, Dunn, Horan, Coffey midfield. Davidson, Girma, Fox as the back 3. 3-4-3 or 4–4-2.
3-4-3
Swanson, Williams, Shaw
Nighswonger, Horan, Coffey, Dunn
Davidson, Girma, Fox
Naeher
4-4-2
Swanson, Williams
Dunn, Horan, Coffey, Shaw
Nighswonger, Davidson, Girma, Fox
Naeher
5 subs – Rodman, Smith, Krueger, Sonnett, Lavelle.
In case of a shootout, you have 3 scorers. In case you’re defending a lead, you have 2 defenders. In case you’re down, you have facilitators, which is where CP needs to be at in his career. Remember who brought up CP 1rst in USWNT article.
I get what you’re saying with rotation, but it’s not going to happen. Emma’s going to ride or die with this group.
JR: they look exhausted and it’s basically her updated personnel playing the old way they used to, presumably because they are too tired for the new way. status quo personnel plus regressive tactics = 1-0 games. the thing is who knows what brazil shows up, the team who struggled to win in group (lost to japan) or the bunch who made spain look silly the second time past.
i can say this, if we’re gonna slow build, brazil is going to press.
IV: again I don’t disagree they are tired, I’m just saying Emma’s not going to sit any of the front three or Horan and Lavelle. It’s too bad Macario picked up another injury that would have made “The Quad” and then you could have brought Lavelle of the bench. Shaw not being 100% probably has limited rotation too but maybe it’s just lack of trust with Emma Hayes.
albert is probably part of the MF answer but we’re not making the swap yet.
Albert is an energizer bunny runs around with little direction, rarely passing the ball forward. In a final where being pragmatic is the norm sure. But if she’s the answer going forward we’re asking the wrong questions.
Naeher’s big kick save was absolutely timely but the German player looked offsides?
Anyway, massive gritty step forward for the ladies advancing to the Gold medal match. Teams continue to play very physical on the ball and make it difficult for the midfield to operate. Rose Lavelle is still underperforming with providing chance creation. Horan simply not going to get space to operate and giving the ball up a few times a match. Love the energy Albert brings with how quick she is to the ball.
The entire team has shown some wear and bit slower to ball at this stage of the tournament but the front three is where it shows the most. Although it does not stop there tenacity on the ball, making runs, or tracking back to defend. The final third finishing is just lacking also being defended extremely well with lots of body contact and a ton grabbing. I kind of get the feeling Smith is not going to miss in the next match.
So I am curious if Hayes isn’t confident in Shaw health or skill to play her? She is not a great defender but can pick out a pass and certainly can score. Also, where did Bethune go? Not part of the 18 or more like 17 last two matches
With Croix I think it’s related to the roster rules. Like once Shaw was back dressing she could no longer dress.
At least we were able to watch the USA – Germany match on TV, though it’s not a match anyone will want to remember much.
But it was apparently the last televised soccer match of the Olympic tournament?!
If I understand correctly — and I actually hope this is wrong, because it seems so unbelievable — all the other last three games, including the gold and the bronze medal matches, will be offered on streaming only? That’s even though NBC also has USA, E!, and CNBC at its disposal — but no, they can’t even find a two-hour slot for a delayed broadcast, or an abridged rerun with cuts and commercials, which was already disrespectful to the sport? Maybe not even a crummy ten-minute on-demand highlight reel? For heaven’s sake, _why?!_
I find that appalling, a slap to the sport of soccer in the US in general and women’s soccer in particular. But sadly, most of all to US viewers who could be growing the audience for the sport. I could well imagine that, say, young families in a tight economic year might not want to buy a bunch of streaming services just to watch the odd game that only happens every 4 years.
More than that, it’s just insulting, as a bait and switch tactic. It’s definitely a slap to those of us who already bought a standard cable subscription years ago, mainly to watch soccer such as EPL, and now find that investment on our part totally unappreciated, apparently only because it doesn’t allow giant corporations to track _enough_ of our data.
Having a Brazilian family connection., I’ve followed Marta and the Brazilians for a long time as well. I would have been fascinated to see how their younger group played Spain, and I hope they will get the USWNT into an interesting match, less cagey and defensive than Hayes has been so far. But I guess I’ll just have to read about it all.
It’s sad to think that the prime years for soccer on actual TV in the US may now already be behind us.
US soccer says the final will be live on USA Network. Not broadcast tv but on pretty much every baseline cable package. The bronze medal match is also live on USA. Perhaps whatever schedule you were looking at just wasn’t up to date after the semis. My cable guide also has the matches listed live on USA network.
Thanks so much; my bad indeed. Ich nehme alles zurück und behaupte das Gegenteil:
All the medal matches are indeed on Telemundo, and three of them are on USA, missing only the men‘s bronze. I don’t know why I had thought the opposite; maybe just because it was hard to find among all the other sports (my cable lists all Olympic sports jumbled together under “Other games”), or indeed because I had looked at a not yet updated schedule.
I should be more optimistic. Maybe even one of them will put the women’s Brazil vs. Spain semifinal on rerun sometime; it seems to have been quite a game. If anyone spots that information, I would be grateful.
Later, a third mea culpa:
Last night I rewatched USA – Germany back on the DVR, a game I had only caught the ending & OT of earlier.
Sure enough, Brazil – Spain was evidently shown — but on E! network, which is way down in the cable listings and hardly a channel I had even heard of or associated with NBC, much less sports. /-: It’s apparently also not included on the livesoccertv website — perhaps understandably, if that one match may be the only soccer game it has ever shown. (Although … if NBC owns it, couldn’t they now air overflow EPL games there, and more? *wild hope*)
So that was a one-off miss. I wish NBC had publicized it a little better, but they did put an 8-minute highlight reel on demand, which I’ve also just watched
And boy, was it busy. A lot of Brazil offense, pounding a pretty naive-looking Spanish defense. In retrospect, probably I was _also_ wrong to criticize cagey and defensive.
When it comes to Brazil, we may be very thankful for Hayes’s insistence on calm, patience, and backing up defenders with help as they need it. I’m now really looking forward to that game, while also hoping the USA haven’t worn themselves out too much just getting to it.
again, the goal was more like what i want US teams to do (at least some of the time), most of the game wasn’t. they win the ball, 3 passes, direct, up the middle, goal. back to DM. DM to CF. CF to wing. quick transition off winning the ball, didn’t let germany get back, threaded a pass between backs instead of around the flank. well done, nice set up pass, well finished. but they didn’t even play that like the first go at germany where there was more energy and they worked triangles and inside options. it was mostly hyper conservative berhalter style keepaway wing ball. which IMO was good tactics up 1-0 but less so when we couldn’t score in regulation and were risking a kick lottery again.
that being said, that’s 2 GA in 5 tournament games. 2 GA in 9 games under this coach. i keep telling people go the “shutdown defense” approach and get pushback and people wanting their attacking wingbacks. defense wins championships.
Pulisic running riot on Barcelona in pre season with a goal and an assist in the first15 minutes
I was told he wasn’t athletic enough to score with his left foot. Weird.
1 – it’s preseason match
2- What you said doesn’t make sense- Not athletic enough to score with his left foot? He’s been scoring with a lot with his left the last 4 years. I ask you to look it up last year, so we wouldn’t have to bring it up again. Remember, the long ball ( Zimmerman) v Morocco friendly. He brought the ball down, made a right hessi (hesitation), made a pass to BA with his left and BA scored with his left. One of many times for CP.
3- He’s not athletic enough to beat other countries best soccer players. When he can’t get pass the opponent, he looks to the ref or he fouls a lot (and complains to the ref).
4- When smart people lie, we are all worse of for it.
5- I’m not an influencer. You 2tone, Imperative Voice are.
6- The 1st Liberian person to ever run a 100m under 10 seconds happened this year 2024. The American that won gold in the 100m is from the state of FLA 9.79. The last time America won the gold medal in that event was 20 years ago. Justin Gatlin 04 who is from my hometown. Same hometown as Roy Jones Jr; same hometown as Derrick Brooks; same hometown as the NFL’s all time leading rusher!
100 m dash results are not the only indicator of athleticism. Are you saying George Weah was not athletic? Thirty 100m dash gold medals from the modern Olympics 6 have come from WC winning countries. Current world top 10 according to FIFA, only England and Germany have ever won a 100m dash. Brazil has won the most WCs and has never won a 100m dash medal men or women. There’s no connection between the 100m dash and World Cup success.
Lol. I needed that laugh JR! Yeah Pulisic just doesn’t have the athletic ability.
Dumbest statement I have read is that he isn’t athletic enough. Not according to the world of soccer commentators.
It’s OK to Think- I’m an influencer? Interesting. I see you comment more than I do.
You attack ad hominem at people. You think your opinion is truth. I don’t think my opinion is truth. It’s just my opinion. I accept that my opinions will be wrong. And when I am wrong I admit it.
You however gloat over others when they admit that their opinions in a conversation were wrong.
No I am not influencer nor do I care to be. Influencers always have to be right…. kind of like you.
JR: here is the deal. there is more than one way to come at this. there is messi-level skill. there is mbappe-level speed — and he would probably run a solid D1 level 100m. there is gakpo-height. or you want nasty defense. or some combination of same.
and i mean to an extreme. beasley and landon wide type stuff.
you’re saying pulisic doesn’t have to be bolt or mbappe, isn’t gakpo, and can then get away with being just “kind of messi occasionally.” you know, score the odd bender every 10 games.
no, this is not how soccer works. if you want to be the skill team on the field you better be the best or at least one of the top few on the ball in the world. it is not a recipe for success to be a top 20 skill team showing up to teams as skilled or more trying to boss them off the pitch. we are kind of sloppy, we shouldn’t be trying to be the precision swiss watch like we are baby barca.
you can mock the usain bolt approach but argentina aside a lot of the better teams last time were “get the ball and counter at speed” teams, france, morocco, japan. and if we’re going the argentina route we better be di maria and messi good. not just “the fanboys tell me i am good because i am in serie a” good. we saw this summer what happens when we run a finesse offense through pulisic.
the other main alternatives are target aerial soccer a la gakpo holland; or stout defense like some historical italian teams. we hit crosses like gakpo is in there, but he’s not, and we don’t want to start a target forward. and then in terms of defense we want to take risks with a press and attacking wingbacks.
you can mock this all you want. you can make fun of track people despite the existence of teams built around pure wide speed. but what the general bulk of soccer results come down to is a team that is exceptional at “something.” too skilled, too fast, too good in the air, or impossible to score on. the basic fact is in recent years the US has been mediocre across the board and thus neither fish nor fowl. a little weah. a little reyna. a little like it thinks it could be a target team. a little like it wants to be a shutdown team but can’t do it on holland level squads.
if you are going to mock speed as an approach, they better have a couple messis someplace because the defense will see them coming.
i have advocated athletes because i think among the various EA FIFA attributes we could possibly have, this remains closest to doing something as a “landon type” team. it activates guys like weah, yow, campbell, and weston, and maybe jedi and dest if pushed up. that’s actually less about reyna and pulisic, who i see as the “last ball” type guys in an athletic counter type team. along with weston just crashing the box. it’s where the bulk of the team is.
you can’t play skill ball if all we have that way is reyna and pulisic. we want to be good at technical soccer. the pool is not there yet for that. as i said when i started, you want to play messi soccer go make some messis for us. otherwise this is naive wish fulfillment stuff and most NT don’t to tactics they aren’t developed up to execute. nor do they hire coaches hoping to teach their team to be something they are not. they look at the roster. they hire someone with a convincing story what to do with the pool players plus the leading prospects on the way. that remains not baby barca ball. sorry. and it won’t be baby barca ball until we are one of the most gifted technical soccer nations in the world. you mention brazil; this isn’t brazil.
IOTT,
“He’s not athletic enough to beat other countries best soccer players. ”
What does that even mean? ”Athletic enough” is a nebulous, vague, phrase which winds up meaning a bunch of things to a bunch of people; sort of like “World Class”.
If you apply these phrases positively to someone, it means YOU think a lot of the person in question but doesn’t explain why you do to anyone else. You dismiss CP for some reason. Pulisic has a lot of potential and, if he builds on last season, he has a chance to be pretty decent player for an American. I define that as someone other decent (not CONCACAF) countries worry about enough to game plan against.
Pulisic has beaten the best players from other countries. He’s played often enough in the EPL and the Champions League. However, except for this last year, he hasn’t been consistent enough a player to play regularly and challenge these players regularly .
If you don’t play regularly, you don’t face the best on a consistent basis. Therefore, you can’t prove you can beat the best on a consistent basis. The great players perform at that high level consistently over a long period of time, not just one season.
If you’re talking about world soccer, America has never had a player “athletic enough to beat other countries best soccer players” on a consistent basis.
Long story short, you’re beating a dead, rotting horse with this athleticism qualifier.
Elsewhere, Cole Campbell got 30 minutes today for Dortmund’s first team. A lot of backups and reserves in when he was in but he didn’t look out of place. Still hard to break in with the wing depth they have. Gio had one of Dortmund’s best chances in the first half but the keeper made a nice save. They played 4, 30 min quarters, instead of the traditional 90 minutes.
Nice.
Looking like Brazil in the final. Hope the ladies are watching. This Brazil team counters with lethality.
Congrats.
Good to see the ladies back in the final. But Sophia Smith should have had a hat trick in this game and they had multiple chances in regular time to score.
i am sure the default narrative coming out of this will be the quality of the trident, and they had the vast majority of the offense, but they are getting through games 1-0 in OT which is squeaking by and risky, and they were kind of wasteful, yes, and i am trying to sort out how much of this is the midfield needs a retool and how much is the forwards could use competition.
naeher did well but is 36, kreuger and sonnett are >30, fox looked like you could get at her on foot speed, lavelle hasn’t impressed me much, horan and coffey, ditto, the whole midfield is just ok. dunn and williams are >30. forward line is productive and the key cogs are young, but sloppy and sometimes prone to iso ball.
i will be curious how this progresses the next 3 years. girma and the forwards seem like the core productive elements going forward.
Certainly, Emma will look at other players going forward. She clearly wanted just to put out a similar roster to WC for continuity minus retirement of Rapinoe and leaving Morgan home. The US actually isn’t as deep as you’d think. We’ve really struggled at the youth levels the last 10 years. There are a couple younger players out with injury. Of course the recruitment of Yohannes is also out there. Moultrie is 18, Thompson, and Shaw are 19. The women are going through that do we still go thru college or do we go straight to the pros? Also do we stay NWSL or go to Europe? Vlatko clearly knows how to coach at the club level, but just couldn’t get the respect of the squad at the international level. These women really seem to respect Emma and believe in her plan. Of course that’s easy when you’re winning I guess.
on further thought i think i like swanson, smith on the fence, meh on rodman who has the lowest strike rate. same wings last summer and overall they weren’t worth a crap minus swanson. what does that tell you. and though we showed occasional signs of growth over time this has defaulted back to old tactics. maybe force of habit.
maybe nerves at the moment. lavelle i expected to more productive like she used to be. i thought we weren’t dominating the midfield. girma is excellent both at her primary task and at passing out. naeher is getting too old as are a list including horan. remembering this is going to now be the 3 years away part of their cycle. the US is poor at age planning these days.
i understand hayes’ deal runs through the next WWC. she has underlined the value of a truly top coach,. we need to get off the “sale bin” value types we seemed stuck on.
with the exception of her subbing. she went too deep with the quarter starters and they looked tired for a lot of this one except for the goal (and then for a period after that their energy kicked up, like they could smell it).
re development, i am not sold on deferring to the clubs. i think that is desirable to capitalist types or those who just xerox some vague idea of “europe.” in reality a few clubs seem to produce most of our domestic grown players. i don’t how a tiny amount of clubs doing development preaches for decentralized, and it does so at the expense of them growing up playing together as much. and i know the pipeline kids play together at camps but that’s not the same as a residency.
i don’t know if there is enough systematic development work abroad yet where we can patch things with passport women. that’s more a dude thing. and to me the FIFA 18 year old rule forces you to grow your own and figure out what works best for that. no one else is going to be in the business of coming up with americans ready to play top soccer. and i’d like to see us be more experimental and creative about it. i kind of think our success is almost in spite of the system not because of it. i mean it’s still near 1/3 the MNT is college kids. that tells me the scouting or incentives are off.
and to me regardless how tapped people think they are, they need to do the work because all these 1-0s say — as foudy did — the margins are vanishingly thin. plus the age issue, which they dealt with about halfway this time. i give her credit, she’s managed at least a final with a duct taped team, but i was saying go younger because it’s gonna have to happen some time in the 4 years.
JR,
“Certainly, Emma will look at other players going forward. She clearly wanted just to put out a similar roster to WC for continuity minus retirement of Rapinoe and leaving Morgan home.”
Leaving Morgan home is the single best thing she did. The future of this team is that young, attacking Trident. Leaving Diamond Bar home meant they had no option but to come through. No security blanket. So far they seem to be doing that. It takes guts to trust your people that much.
“The US actually isn’t as deep as you’d think. We’ve really struggled at the youth levels the last 10 years……….”
Even now, the American public is still used to the women being the dominant power. The rest of the world has caught up to the USWNT. Hayes has arrived at the point where the next generation is actually going to have to try to get it back.
“These women really seem to respect Emma and believe in her plan. Of course that’s easy when you’re winning I guess.”
It’s the other way around. First you respect her and believe in her plan . Do that and that leads to you winning. Of course all that winning she did at Chelsea makes it easier to trust her.
Carli Lloyd criticized Hayes for being unprepared because she didn’t take any of the vets, presumably talking Alex here, to teach the kids how to win. Well, it turns out the kids had a manager who could teach them how to win by themselves. Frankly, that kind of thing works better that way.
Of course we’re seeing a lot of that whining and moaning about “they are getting through games 1-0 in OT which is squeaking by and risky, and they were kind of wasteful, yes,”.
You see that now because Hayes understands how to win. She understands that the game immediately changes when you get to the knockout stages whether it’s a club or a national team. You’d think American fans , who are raised on playoffs in sports, would understand the disparity.
That’s why you can blow out Germany 4-1 in a group game but then have to squeeze out a 1-0 win in OT when you face the same team in the knockout stages.
Maybe someday, if we are all very good , we can have a manager who is as talented, competent and accomplished for the USMNT. I’m not holding my breath.
Women’s clubs are a long ways from being able to take over youth development. There just aren’t enough clubs even with the new USL women’s league. Others would know a lot more about girls youth setups than me. Bethune and Hershfelt took the college route and were on the Olympic route but they’re rookies and already 23 and 22. Brand who started for Germany is 21 and has been a pro for 4 years and has over 50 caps, so we aren’t developing at that pace. Of course our rosters are going to be older if our women aren’t turning pro until 21 or 22. I think we’ll slowly see more and more girls go straight to pros but with only 14 teams there just aren’t a lot of roster spots so we’ll still see women going to college for a year or two at least. We’ll also see more just skipping NWSL like Fishel and Albert and going abroad but as you point out that can’t happen until 18. I do actually think recruiting dual nats will actually increase as girls development increases in Europe. With the large number of males in Europe with US connections there certainly has to be women over there as well. Yohannes a little different given she was born here and lived in the US ten years.
JR, after Moultrie kicked the NWSL door open more and more young ladies are entering the league and will continue to do so. With the recent NWSL underage signings they will continue into the future. Rosters sizes need to increase to what the big Euro clubs have. Top to bottom NWSL is the best league but remains to be scene if it can develop talent? Europe is essentially a handful of really good clubs(Lyon, PSG, Barca, Real Madrid, Chelsea,). Watch a WSL match and there is certain amount of traffic cones on the field and the skilled players do what they want.
i think the rest of the world is catching up because they are starting to professionalize at all and with the stability of our pro league our team is now a window team and not a long-term camp team playing together all the time. kind of like concacaf has caught us as they added their own pro leagues and got several guys each into MLS.
i would think the appeal of, say, the french league, would be wages more so than actual quality. i think for women’s soccer we are the functional equivalent of an EPL. people abroad come here to up their games and play the best. there may be some emerging women’s soccer nations but except for maybe france and england it’s not because the pro leagues are anywhere equivalent or pay even what we do, which is basically teacher money on average.
so to me you go abroad for a different experience or a significant other or maybe a handful of teams pay good wages. it might even be useful to have some outlier players over there earning a living and figuring out if they are on to anything new. but i kind of think it’s that you have bigtime soccer nations in general that have finally professionalized even somewhat where they can tap into the women’s half.
side point but to me the US needs to quit xeroxing others’ answers, both men and women, and needs to sit down and figure out — as though nothing existed — if you were starting fresh how would you do development. and then set up some NT-driven alternative concepts to work alongside pro academies and colleges.
personally i feel like a lot of what we do is dibs-driven. a handful of teams have some legitimate ability to grow players. but a lot of teams the development schemes seem to be just an extension of the old HGP dibs schemes where MLS used to grab juniors or seniors from traditional club teams in their territory and claim them, to keep them out of the draft. from a developmental perspective if you aren’t growing them from U5 or U10 you’re just poaching select kids, and not really developing them yourself.
i mean, brooklyn raines is one of the few HGP at houston and technically we traded RSL for his rights because once upon a time he played with them. and usually our system can’t do half that good. and it starts to sound like the old dibs scheme where they’d really spent 90% of their youth career in select. but if you dibs them that’s MLS rights plus transfer rights.
personally i’d like to see regional/national residencies and/or the return of something like project 40 in the minors. not at the exception of, but instead alongside, academies and college.
This was a tense match…..holy cow!!!!
Congratulations