(01-06-2020, 11:45 AM)oldalum Wrote: always the potential drawback (for Stanford fans) of our players doing so well.
Along those lines, Macario was named Hermann trophy winner, for second year in a row. She can't play for the USWNT yet, but it's notable that there seems to be no speculation that she may be turning pro now. She's an academic all-American so she apparently loves her classes, and she loves her team, so makes sense.
My hunch is that if Macario were eligible for the USWNT now, she'd have already been called into multiple camps and would be very likely to make the Olympic roster over, say, Morgan Brian or Allie Long. If an Olympic roster spot seemed likely, then leaving early like Davidson did last year makes sense. If not, then the non-USWNT NWSL salary doesn't seem like a big enough inducement to come out early.
Smith isn't a shoo-in to make the Olympic roster, of course. We have to remember that it's very, very difficult for a player to make the 18-player Olympic roster who wasn't on the 23-player roster at the World Cup the year before. Going into the 2012 Olympics, only Sydney Leroux did it. Going into the 2016 Olympics, a few more players did it (Crystal Dunn, Mallory Pugh, Lindsey Horan, and Allie Long), but there was significant roster turnover after the 2015 World Cup: Abby Wambach, Lori Chalupny, Lauren Holiday, and Shannon Boxx retired. Christie Rampone was hurt. And Leroux and Amy Rodriguez were both pregnant. This year, we don't have any retirements from the forward group, and the pregnant Alex Morgan has stated her intent to be ready to go by the time the Olympics come around. (More on that in a bit, but if Morgan pulls that off, it would be nothing short of a amazing.)
You can probably bring 5 forwards as part of an 18-player roster.
Maybe 6. (I'm assuming 2 GKs, 6 defenders, 5 MFs, and 5 forwards.) You have the following list of forwards from the 2019 World Cup roster, all of whom are currently healthy and expect to be available for the Olympics:
* Megan Rapinoe
* Alex Morgan
* Tobin Heath
* Christen Press
* Mallory Pugh
* Carli Lloyd
* Jessica McDonald
And also in camp is NWSL star Lynn Williams. It's
incredibly hard to imagine Rapinoe, Heath, Press, or Pugh being left off this team. And if Morgan is match-fit, then she's obviously coming, too, and there's your five. That
includes leaving off USWNT legend Carli Lloyd and two players who have scored at will in the NWSL, McDonald and Williams. If you want to bring a sixth forward, is new head coach Vlatko Andonovski going to pick Smith over the proven Lloyd? But even if she doesn't make the team, she could still be considered a federation player for salary purposes if she's considered sufficiently important in the player pool. If she is, then the max salary of $50,000 becomes more like $170,000, and it makes more financial sense for her to go.
I just don't quite think it's Smith's time,
unless Morgan doesn't make it back, Vlatko still wants six forwards,
and there's a desire to start building for the future at forward instead of maintaining an aging roster or having a proven NWSL scorer as your last forward (Lloyd is 37, Rapinoe is 34, and Press, Heath, and McDonald are all 31).
And while I wouldn't put anything past an athlete of Morgan's caliber, she's due just 3 months before the Olympics start. Getting match fitness back and syncing back up with the rest of the team in just 3 months is a massive undertaking. She'll miss all of Olympic qualifying (which wouldn't necessarily provide the best test anyway in CONCACAF), so she'd be getting a couple of warmup matches right before the tournament starts. The stories I've seen of women accomplishing incredible athletic feats soon after childbirth are usually in the several-month range (like Kara Goucher in the 2011 Boston Marathon, setting a PR and finishing 5th seven months after giving birth, or Paula Radcliffe winning the NYC Marathon nine months after giving birth). Not saying she can't do it; I'm just saying I don't think that short of a turnaround has been done before. So, does Smith leave school on the bet that Morgan doesn't quite make it back in time? This isn't like a few years ago, where Dunn and Pugh being left off the 2015 World Cup roster was seen as something of a snub. They'd been in the mix, playing regularly for the USWNT, but had been left off that WC roster before making the Olympics the following year. We don't have any sort of track record like that for Smith.
Tl;dr -- if Smith is leaving early betting that she'll be on the Olympics, it's a questionable bet. If she's leaving early because she thinks she'll be a federation player for salary purposes and will have a leg up on a firm roster spot for the next World Cup/Olympics cycle, then it makes more sense.
Following up on that, here are some thoughts on the roster math for the Olympics. The Olympic qualifying roster will have 20 players, with a final cut to the 18 going to Tokyo. So, with only 7 backups on the roster, I figure you'd want to have one backup goalkeeper, one backup center back, one backup outside back, one backup center mid, one backup wide mid, one backup center forward, and one backup winger. You can fudge that a little bit, and maybe skimp on a backup center back because you could shift Ertz back there in a pinch, or skip a backup wide midfielder because you might play Press there if someone goes down. With that in mind, here's a guess at the roster, assuming Morgan doesn't make it back in time:
GK (2): Naeher, Franch
DF (6): O'Hara, Sauerbrunn, Dahlkemper, Dunn, Davidson, Sonnett
MF (5): Mewis, Ertz, Horan, Lavelle, Andi Sullivan
F (5): Lloyd, Rapinoe, Press, Heath, Pugh
That would mean leaving Morgan Brian, Allie Long, Jessica McDonald, Ashlyn Harris, Ali Krieger, and Alex Morgan off the roster.
If Vlatko is comfortable with Davidson as a backup at both center back and outside back, though, then it might make more sense leaving off Sonnett in favor of a sixth forward, unless you're worried about O'Hara's health. (Or if Vlatko prefers Davidson to Dahlkemper in the middle, in which case it's Dahlkemper's spot that might be at risk, with the idea being you'd move Ertz to center back in case of injury.) But the bottom line is that it's really hard to make this Olympic roster, and there will likely be some household names left out.
