[ColoradoTree]

Good analysis of the US women's soccer match against Canada.  I believe that is three out of five matches in the Olympics the USA team did not score a goal.   My uneducated 2 cents:  Either the wrong offense is being used for this team's personnel or the USA simply isn't as good as advertised prior to the Olympics.

I mean, we're the top-ranked team in the world, we just won the World Cup in 2019, and we entered the Olympics on a 40-some game unbeaten streak (against some great teams, too). In the Olympic qualifying final in February 2020, we beat Canada 3-0, and we beat them 1-0 in the SheBelieves Cup earlier this year. We have the best collection of talent of any national team in the world. It's not that we're not as good as advertised. And the results under Vlatko to date suggest that our general tactical approach has been working. 

But obviously I can't say it worked here. Something was just plain off this tournament, and it's not something that really emerged in 2020 or 2021 in the runup to the Olympics. We looked dominant in every game coming in except for a 1-1 draw with Sweden in Stockholm in April (which, I dunno, man, sometimes when you play a top 5 team in the world on the road, you do well to get a draw). 

Maybe that's the main thing--we'd been too successful, and just like the NCAA basketball tournament, you want to take a loss at some point so your team experiences that feeling and regains the hunger to fix it. We did seem to lack a certain confident hunger, and we also lacked the ability to adjust to unexpected tactics. When Sweden beat us in Rio, we responded by revamping tactics and becoming a much more possession-focused team that would build through the back, rely on our midfielders, and get better chances that way than the old "just bomb it into Abby Wambach and she'll head it in" days. That's what won us the World Cup in 2019, and that's basically who we've been since. Possession has been pretty easy for a few years now. Against Sweden, it was impossible. They were anticipating passes and cutting off lanes, swarming attackers, etc. Standard stuff, but they stuck to it and we just couldn't respond. Then, my goodness, this Canada match. We had a good 10-15 minutes at the start, but after that, it was like our mids forgot how to complete passes and handle the ball. I don't know how a team just sort of collectively forgets the basics, but I'm all ears if someone has an idea. The mentality just wasn't there, and it's hard to pinpoint why. Like we'd just woken up and our body and brain weren't quite on the same page yet. 

Bizarre that it happens with this roster, too, since we basically ran it back with the 2019 version of the team. If anyone was going to be experienced enough to respond on the fly and not be overwhelmed by the moment, it was this group. Anyway, after the Bronze medal match, that likely means the end to competitive matches for the USWNT for Rapinoe, Lloyd, and maybe Sauerbrunn, and I'd expect a lot of new faces coming into the mix before 2023, with that generation of O'Hara/Press/Heath/Morgan potentially starting to see some turnover, too.

[ColoradoTree]

Good analysis of the US women's soccer match against Canada.  I believe that is three out of five matches in the Olympics the USA team did not score a goal.   My uneducated 2 cents:  Either the wrong offense is being used for this team's personnel or the USA simply isn't as good as advertised prior to the Olympics.

I mean, we're the top-ranked team in the world, we just won the World Cup in 2019, and we entered the Olympics on a 40-some game unbeaten streak (against some great teams, too). In the Olympic qualifying final in February 2020, we beat Canada 3-0, and we beat them 1-0 in the SheBelieves Cup earlier this year. We have the best collection of talent of any national team in the world. It's not that we're not as good as advertised. And the results under Vlatko to date suggest that our general tactical approach has been working. 

But obviously I can't say it worked here. Something was just plain off this tournament, and it's not something that really emerged in 2020 or 2021 in the runup to the Olympics. We looked dominant in every game coming in except for a 1-1 draw with Sweden in Stockholm in April (which, I dunno, man, sometimes when you play a top 5 team in the world on the road, you do well to get a draw). 

Maybe that's the main thing--we'd been too successful, and just like the NCAA basketball tournament, you want to take a loss at some point so your team experiences that feeling and regains the hunger to fix it. We did seem to lack a certain confident hunger, and we also lacked the ability to adjust to unexpected tactics. When Sweden beat us in Rio, we responded by revamping tactics and becoming a much more possession-focused team that would build through the back, rely on our midfielders, and get better chances that way than the old "just bomb it into Abby Wambach and she'll head it in" days. That's what won us the World Cup in 2019, and that's basically who we've been since. Possession has been pretty easy for a few years now. Against Sweden, it was impossible. They were anticipating passes and cutting off lanes, swarming attackers, etc. Standard stuff, but they stuck to it and we just couldn't respond. Then, my goodness, this Canada match. We had a good 10-15 minutes at the start, but after that, it was like our mids forgot how to complete passes and handle the ball. I don't know how a team just sort of collectively forgets the basics, but I'm all ears if someone has an idea. The mentality just wasn't there, and it's hard to pinpoint why. Like we'd just woken up and our body and brain weren't quite on the same page yet. 

Bizarre that it happens with this roster, too, since we basically ran it back with the 2019 version of the team. If anyone was going to be experienced enough to respond on the fly and not be overwhelmed by the moment, it was this group. Anyway, after the Bronze medal match, that likely means the end to competitive matches for the USWNT for Rapinoe, Lloyd, and maybe Sauerbrunn, and I'd expect a lot of new faces coming into the mix before 2023, with that generation of O'Hara/Press/Heath/Morgan potentially starting to see some turnover, too.