[ColoradoTree]

And while she's not on the USWNT Olympic qualifying tournament roster, I believe she's still in camp with all the players who are, so she's still getting her chance to show what she can do. The upside is that these group stage games (against Haiti, Costa Rica, and Panama) won't tell Vlatko much about how good his team is, so if, say, Lynn Williams or Jessica McDonald scores a couple of goals against an overmatched opponent, it shouldn't matter too much to Vlatko in setting the final Olympic roster, so it shouldn't set Smith back too much. If I'm Vlatko, I'm far more interested in how players look in training (where Smith will get similar looks to those two) and the likely final against Canada (in which McDonald and Williams are unlikely to feature anyway, since our starting XI will be out there for most of that one). The downside, of course, is she won't be able to prove what she can do in those games, and even those lopsided group games are still opportunities to develop a sense of timing with the other players and better understand their tendencies.

[ColoradoTree]

And while she's not on the USWNT Olympic qualifying tournament roster, I believe she's still in camp with all the players who are, so she's still getting her chance to show what she can do. The upside is that these group stage games (against Haiti, Costa Rica, and Panama) won't tell Vlatko much about how good his team is, so if, say, Lynn Williams or Jessica McDonald scores a couple of goals against an overmatched opponent, it shouldn't matter too much to Vlatko in setting the final Olympic roster, so it shouldn't set Smith back too much. If I'm Vlatko, I'm far more interested in how players look in training (where Smith will get similar looks to those two) and the likely final against Canada (in which McDonald and Williams are unlikely to feature anyway, since our starting XI will be out there for most of that one). The downside, of course, is she won't be able to prove what she can do in those games, and even those lopsided group games are still opportunities to develop a sense of timing with the other players and better understand their tendencies.