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Graham HaysESPN.com
The United States women’s national soccer team aced its first exam under new coach Vlatko Andonovski when it secured qualification last month for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. But as important as those games were in ensuring the Americans have a chance to become the first team to win World Cup and Olympic titles in back-to-back years, they were introductory coursework compared to the on-field challenge that awaits in the sixth edition of the SheBelieves Cup.
After the qualifying tournament last month against mostly overmatched regional opponents, the top-ranked U.S. now faces three of the better teams in the world — No. 6 England, No. 10 Japan and No. 13 Spain — in the span of eight days.
The games against England and Spain are World Cup rematches; the U.S. defeated Spain 2-1 in the round of 16 and England in a semifinal. England and Spain also were the only teams in the tournament to, at least temporarily, erase deficits after the U.S. opened the scoring.
– Pugh returns to U.S. roster for SheBelieves Cup
– U.S. Soccer, players file opposing motions in suit
– USWNT dominates Mexico, books berth to Tokyo
England (sort of; more on that later) and Japan are among the teams qualified for the Olympics.
From the travel involved in three different sites to the trophy at the end, the SheBelieves Cup is meant to replicate the rigors of a major event such as the one coming up this summer.
Here’s a quick guide to the basics.
How to watch
All six games will be available on ESPN platforms.
Thursday
Sunday
March 11
Mallory Pugh’s return highlights a familiar USWNT roster
Almost from the moment he replaced Jill Ellis last fall, Andonovski stressed he isn’t looking to reinvent anything with the national team — not with the success it achieved last summer and the short turnaround between the World Cup and Olympics on the women’s soccer calendar. So there is ample continuity on display, with 20 of 23 players on the SheBelieves roster also World Cup winners in France last summer. One of those changes was necessary because World Cup Silver Boot winner Alex Morgan is absent while awaiting the birth of her first child.
Andonovski’s highest-profile decision in his young tenure was leaving forward Mallory Pugh off last month’s qualifying roster. Already a World Cup winner and 2016 Olympian when she was a matter of weeks removed from high school, Pugh returns to the roster for this tournament after continuing to train with the U.S. during the qualifying process.
That lines up with the coach’s caution not to read too much into Pugh missing out on one roster.
“I want to be clear that she is a very good, very talented player,” Andonovski said of Pugh last month. “She performed well [in advance of the qualifying event]. She has a big future in front of her. I’m pretty sure that if she keeps on developing going forward, she will be on this roster.”
Still the second-youngest player on the roster at 21, Pugh is hardly at a career crossroads. But after dealing with injuries, some inconsistency and massive expectations in her first three National Women’s Soccer League seasons, her development remains among the most intriguing and important long-term stories for this team.
“I think part of Mal’s growth is her, in terms of just continuing to gain confidence in who she is and what she’s about,” Ellis said during the team’s victory tour last year. “That’s part of a young person growing, right? Because I think when Mal is at her best is when she’s got a little swagger to her and she’s got the confidence to run at people.”
The new faces are forward Lynn Williams, midfielder Andi Sullivan and defender Casey Short, all of whom were in serious contention at various times for Ellis’ World Cup roster. Sullivan and Williams also were part of Andonovski’s 20-player qualifying roster last month. Andonovski had a knack in the NWSL for taking players who otherwise appeared stalled between the top echelon and the next level down and steering them out of that limbo. Stalled thus far by injuries and limited opportunities at the international level, Williams, Sullivan and Short all fit that profile.
Setting the stage for the Olympics
Assuming the Olympics proceed as planned despite current global concerns around the coronavirus, the U.S. will learn its draw in the 12-team tournament on April 20. The next challenge will be paring the roster to 18 players — as compared to 23 for the World Cup — before the competition begins in Japan on July 22.
The small roster leads to tremendously difficult questions. Four years ago, Ellis had to decide whether to include Megan Rapinoe, then coming off a major knee injury and still working her way back to full form. Rapinoe made the roster but never wielded her full influence on events. Andonovski also will be monitoring Morgan’s return to the field, assuming she doesn’t deviate from her stated intention to compete for a spot. (She is due in April.)
Add Morgan to the forwards on the SheBelieves roster and you likely need to cut at least two and probably three players from the group of eight that also includes Tobin Heath, Carli Lloyd, Jessica McDonald, Christen Press, Pugh, Rapinoe and Williams.
The same conundrum — one that every national team in the world would love to have — exists in the midfield. At the moment, the U.S. has four exceptional midfielders still comfortably in their 20s and a system that only allows for three of them on the field at one time. So Julie Ertz, Lindsey Horan, Rose Lavelle and Samantha Mewis are always competing for minutes.
What to know about the opponents
England: By virtue of its fourth-place finish in the World Cup, England qualified for the Olympics. Except it qualified as Great Britain, which is how athletes from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales compete in the Summer Games. So Phil Neville will coach, and the team will probably look a lot like the Lionesses but with some additions from the other countries.
On top of that potential selection headache, England is dealing with a considerable number of injuries and generally hasn’t played that well — at least consistently — since the World Cup.
Japan: The Olympic hosts exited the World Cup in particularly painful fashion, beaten in the round of 16 by eventual finalist Netherlands on a penalty kick that was precipitated by captain Saki Kumagai’s handball in the closing minutes. But Japan has been rebuilding toward 2020 for some time. More than half the World Cup team was 23 or younger, and almost all of those players return on the SheBelieves roster.
Spain: While members of the U.S. team are in the midst of a high-profile legal showdown with their federation, members of the Spanish national team were part of a significant recent labor win in negotiating a landmark collective bargaining agreement with the Primera Iberdrola, the country’s professional division. That came after players from 16 teams briefly went on strike in November. Dominant at the youth international level and with a league whose profile has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, Spain is at the epicenter of the sport’s European growth.
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