The coming year will be a pivotal one for a beleaguered Team US. With last summer’s biting disappointment at the World Cup still fresh, a team deep in transition has its sight set on redemption, and the Olympic Games in France (just five months off) are the chosen stage.
Redemption starts now, with the inaugural Concacaf W Gold Cup. 23 players are gathered in California to play their first games of 2024, stocked with a litany of new names and under the care of an interim coach. Over the course of three weeks (should they progress to the final) the US will test their mettle against top teams from Concacaf (including reigning gold medalists Canada), and challengers from Conmebol, who’ve sent four teams to the inaugural affair (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay).
Interim boss Twila Kilgore— who will remain with the team as Emma Hayes’ assistant once Chelsea’s decorated boss lands stateside this May— plans to use the Gold Cup as a testing ground for an Olympic run, improving their style of play, and focusing on “little wrinkles”:
“We know in major tournaments that two things kind of really come out: who you really are, and what your preparation has been like … A third thing would just be how you deal with that emotionally. When we get to the Olympics we know that we want the right things to come out. It’s a great opportunity to make small course corrections.”
While soaring expectations remain where they’ve always been for this USWNT (win the whole tournament), the following few weeks will be an essential testing ground, with more important lessons to learn than simply winning.
Perhaps most importantly, Kilgore has worked with Hayes from afar to select a roster filled with emerging talent. Only 11 of the 23 players in camp were on last year’s World Cup squad. Just eight of them were on the 2019 World Cup-winning team. Keen observers may note that Alex Morgan, though available, is not among them.
Key veterans remain— Lindsey Horan, Rose Lavelle and Crystal Dunn aren’t going anywhere just yet— but Emma Hayes has worked with Kilgore to prioritize trialing new names in this Gold Cup. Seven of the 23 arrive with fewer than 10 caps. Five of them debuted late last year. Those players have the chance to gain experience, show what they can do, and make the case to be in the 18-player Olympic team. San Diego Wave’s Jaedyn Shaw and Chelsea’s Mia Fishel will be a few of those names to watch.
Emma Hayes’ handprint may also be felt elsewhere. The USWNT could evolve past their tried and true 4-3-3, or perhaps more readily shift between games and within them, as Emma Hayes is known to do.
Beyond analyzing new players and evolving the team’s identity, the Gold Cup is an exceptional test-run for the Olympic format. Like the Olympics, teams play up to six games with two rest days between each test in the group stage.
Kilgore: “This tournament is a really great opportunity for us. Not every Federation is going to have the opportunity to be in a long haul tournament leading up to the Olympics and this tournament mirrors the Olympic cadence …”
How players handle the tournament format, short turnarounds, adjusting to meet different tests posed by each team, or managing considerations like goal differential or cautions accumulating could impact Olympic selections: “ … Part of Olympic selection is knowing how players will behave, and what their response will be under certain stressors.”
The W Gold Cup’s three groups of four will play each other once in the group stage. The knockout round will then reseed teams ranked by their group stage performance (based on points total first, with several tie-breakers to follow). The top two teams in each group progress alongside the two-best third-place finishers. The number one seed meets the number eight seed in the quarter-final, the number two seed meets the number seven, and so on down the line.
While Group C (Canada, Costa Rica, Paraguay, El Salvador) opens their group stage in Texas, Group B (Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico) starts in San Diego. And Group A (US, Mexico, Argentina, the Dominican Republic) kicks things off in Carson, California. The knockout rounds all go down in California (where the USWNT hold an unblemished all-time record of 49 wins, four draws and no losses).
Beyond their undefeated California-streak, the US also holds a dominant record in Concacaf. This is the first W Gold Cup – expanding competitive opportunities for growth in the region – but it’s far from the first Concacaf competition for the women. Of the 15 Concacaf Championships the US has been a part of, they’ve won 14.
But as the past few years has shown us, the competitive landscape is rapidly changing worldwide. Especially with Conmebol’s participation, several teams in the 2024 W Gold Cup could challenge to deliver the US its first-ever loss in California. Canada, Brazil and Colombia (who’ve also qualified for the ‘24 Olympics) are immediately the most likely contenders.
But emerging programs like Mexico (who play the US third in Group A and are coming off an undefeated year) could also pose challenges. This team expects to face them. Arsenal right-back Emily Fox, on the growth in the region:
“ … Within my experience of being on the national team, the growth of Caribbean teams and Latin American teams have been huge … women’s soccer in general is getting bigger. There’s more funding, more resources, and I think a lot more people are watching. In general, I think as a whole everyone’s getting better and better. Which we love to see. And I think you saw that in the Euros, in Concacaf (Olympic) qualifying for us, and then also in the World Cup last year. So I think for us going into the Gold Cup, we know each game is going to be a challenge”
Should the US pick up a loss in the group stage, or falter early in the knockouts, how they learn and recover from that will be key to this learning opportunity. Emma Hayes will be observing from afar, using the lessons of the next few weeks to sharpen their redemption-run this summer.
