High quality of execution…or a scarcity thereof
Within the opening leg in opposition to Spain, the USWNT dominated almost each attacking metric that mattered. It had 13 pictures to Spain’s 6, ten pictures on track to Spain’s three and 38 touches contained in the field to Spain’s paltry 15.
You understand the place that is heading, in fact. Sure, the USWNT crushed the stat sheet, however it wasn’t capable of finding the breakthrough possibilities it wanted to crack the stats that matter most: objectives. Sure, it had a Sophia Wilson shot (accurately) dominated offside and a Lily Yohannes penalty saved, however each close to misses level to the USWNT’s struggles with on-field execution and effectivity.
“Did I feel we did sufficient to attain a purpose? After all. Did we do sufficient to attain multiple? Completely,” mentioned USWNT supervisor Emma Hayes after the match. “We simply didn’t make the best determination and execute with high quality. Plenty of issues are actually good about what we did, however not these.”
If the USWNT is to rewrite its story with Spain in Chester, it should have to seek out that execution high quality, and rapidly. Spain scored with its first two pictures of the match, in spite of everything. It is not precisely missing in that division.
A midfield shake-up
Hayes’s USWNT midfield within the first Spain fixture was an sudden one: a double pivot setup that includes veteran Lindsey Heaps and teenager Lily Yohannes. Each are stellar gamers in their very own proper, however neither is especially well-suited to the roles Hayes requested them to play, and that was obvious from the primary jiffy of the match. It was their incapability to take care of possession within the heart of the park that led to each early Spain objectives.
Hayes normally leverages Manchester Metropolis’s Sam Coffey and Kansas Metropolis’s Claire Hutton as her pivot, however she will be able to’t do this right here: Coffey withdrew from this camp with a gentle harm to depart the midfield up within the air. Nonetheless, it appears like beginning Hutton—seemingly over Heaps—on this second match in opposition to Spain may be a worthy experiment, if solely to assist the USWNT preserve possession the place it counts.
Elevated physicality
Spain may be the defending world champion, however it crashed out of the 2024 Paris Olympic Video games by the hands of Brazil within the semifinal spherical. Why? As a result of Brazil—a staff so aggressive it obtained eight purple playing cards in opposition to the USWNT in a pleasant match simply 4 months in the past—was intelligent sufficient to cease up Spain earlier than it may actually get going. Tackles, fouls, bumps, you title it: Brazil used the whole lot in its arsenal to maintain Spain from getting comfy, and the tactic paid off for it in a giant method.
