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    Megan Rapinoe Is Not Going Quietly

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    Sitting on the bench as her United States team played at the Women’s World Cup last week, Megan Rapinoe was sure that she was in the wrong spot. She was just as sure that her coach, Vlatko Andonovski, should see that, and fix it.“I’m always shocked when I don’t play,” Rapinoe said with a laugh, joking with reporters on Sunday about her uneasy new role: reserve. “Every player who starts thinks they should play,” she added. “And everyone on the bench thinks they should be on the field.”What else was Rapinoe supposed to think, having come to this World Cup as a marquee player who had been a game changer in its last three editions? For the first time in 12 years, Rapinoe, the outspoken and accomplished leader of the U.S. team for the past decade, is watching the World Cup instead of starring in it. In the first U.S. game at this tournament, a 3-0 victory over Vietnam that was her 200th appearance for the United States, Rapinoe came into the game as a substitute for the final half-hour. In the second game, she did not play at all, even as her team struggled to create space and scoring chances in a 1-1 tie with the Netherlands.Rapinoe, 38, expected this World Cup to be a sort of changing of the guard, of course. She is the oldest player on the team, and on the eve of her team’s departure for New Zealand she announced that this would be her final World Cup and her final professional season.She will never be happy about sitting out, she said. But she also knows she has a role to play.Rapinoe speaking with reporters on Sunday.Abbie Parr/Associated Press“Ultimately, we’re at the World Cup — this is where everybody wants to be, whether you’re playing 90 minutes or whether you’re a game-changer or whatever,” she said. “I think it’s a lot similar to what I thought it would be, bringing all the experience that I can, all the experience that I have, and ultimately being ready whenever my number is called up.”She is, she said, embracing her new role. Maybe the United States needs a player — a player like her, was the clear implication — who gives “20 minutes in two games that wins the team the tournament, or wins a team a game that gets it to the next round.”The United expects to have a long road yet at this World Cup, and no one — including Rapinoe — wants it to be a weekslong eulogy to her career. But Rapinoe’s teammates are already mourning her departure, no matter how many minutes she plays here. When Kelley O’Hara, the defender who has played with Rapinoe at the past three World Cups, was asked days before the tournament started to consider what it will be like when Rapinoe is gone, she broke into tears.“She’s done such incredible things for this team and for the world, so to be able to see the up close and personal Pinoe, and be close to that has been really special,” O’Hara said. “I hope that we all send her out on a high.”“This is where everybody wants to be, whether you’re playing 90 minutes or whether you’re a game-changer or whatever,” Rapinoe said.Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesAlex Morgan called Rapinoe a special player, one the team can still count on. “She makes things happen out of nothing,” Morgan said. “We’ve seen that time and time again.”It is unclear if Rapinoe will have many more chances to make something out of nothing at the World Cup. Andonovski has committed to his new lineup, so much so that he declined to make changes even as it struggled to find a goal against the Netherlands. But Rapinoe made it clear that, from her seat, the United States missed out on controlling its fate against the Netherlands.The team could have set itself up to claim first place in its group if it had beaten the Dutch, most likely locking in an easier path in the knockout rounds. It still controls its destiny — a win, especially a big one, over Portugal on Tuesday would achieve the same result. But Rapinoe knows as well as anyone that World Cups are won or lost by the finest of margins. On the biggest stages, she said, the smallest details can matter, and so she will keep working, keep pushing to play.Rapinoe and the rest of the U.S. reserves who didn’t play against the Netherlands had time to consider their fate as they gathered at training the day after the match. The starters were back at the hotel, resting, as is usual after a game. For Rapinoe, the substitute, there was training. It was a hard lesson, she acknowledged, but also an opportunity.“You cry in your shower or you cry with your friends in the sauna,” she said. But after that, you have no choice but to make the best of it.Marlena Sloss for The New York TimesRapinoe reminded everyone on Sunday that she is not any less of a competitor than she was in her first World Cup, in 2011, the tournament in which, she said, she “announced herself.” In the quarterfinals that year against Brazil, it was Rapinoe who delivered a last-second ball from midfield to Abby Wambach, who scored the header that saved the Americans from a humbling early elimination. The U.S. went on to reach the final.Pressure-filled moments like that remind Rapinoe of where the United States stands in this World Cup. And while she might not be the go-to player anymore, she still has a lot to offer, she said. Watching from the sideline on Thursday, she said, she spotted “some really simple fixes” that she was more than happy to share with her teammates and her coaches.On Sunday, Rapinoe was quick to emphasize that just because she is OK with her role as a sage and helpful veteran, that doesn’t mean she is going any easier on the younger players during practices.Every day in training, she said, her job is to try to take one of theirs. “And that makes them better,” she said. “That makes me better. That makes the whole team better.” More

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      How Lindsey Horan Got Mad, and How That Got the U.S. Even

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      Lindsey Horan’s tying goal against the Netherlands saved her team at the World Cup. But it came from a dark place she knows well.Lindsey Horan was still curled up on the field when she decided, enough already.Enough of getting kicked by players from the Netherlands. Enough of letting the Dutch dictate the game. Enough of the United States women’s team, the two-time reigning world champion, not playing its best at this Women’s World Cup.Horan and her team were an hour into a physical match against the Netherlands filled with sharp elbows and powerful shoves, and they were losing it by a goal. Now Horan, a United States co-captain, had just been hip-checked hard by a Netherlands counterpart, Danielle van de Donk. So after several minutes of being examined by medical staff, and another moment of being lectured by the referee for shoving van de Donk, Horan did exactly what her teammate Julie Ertz had just begged her to do.“Just score this goal,” Ertz had whispered as they lined up to await a corner kick from Rose Lavelle, “to shut everyone up.”And that’s just what she did. As Rose Lavelle’s corner screamed into the penalty area, Horan sprinted for the precise spot where it would arrive. “An absolute dime,” she called the pass from Lavelle. She jumped to meet it, snapped her head and sent the ball straight into the net.“I don’t think you ever want to get me mad because I don’t react in a good way,” Horan said. “Usually, I just go and I want something more. I want to win more. I want to score more. I want to do more for my team.”Horan’s goal lifted the United States to a 1-1 tie with the Netherlands, with one more group match game to play for each team. At the moment, the teams are tied with four points from a win and a draw, but the United States holds a slight edge on goal difference because it beat Vietnam by three goals and the Netherlands beat Portugal by only one.The winner of the group will be decided after the third and final matches in the group, which will be played simultaneously on Tuesday. The U.S. will face Portugal, and the Netherlands will play Vietnam.The United States will enter that game with a new spring in its step, and Horan is the main reason for that. All it took, it turned out, was a bit of rage.“That’s when you get the best football from Lindsey,” Horan said of herself.She is not the first U.S. women’s player, of course, to take it upon herself to personally change the team’s trajectory at a World Cup, to will it to victory on soccer’s biggest stage. Think Megan Rapinoe in 2019, or Carli Lloyd in the 2015 final, to take two recent examples. In each case, and in Horan’s on Thursday, a key player suddenly came to personify the team’s history and legacy — four World Cup titles, four decades atop world soccer — and turn the momentum her team’s way.Horan and Danielle van de Donk of the Netherlands, whose foul led to shoves, shouts and the only U.S. goal.Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesOn Thursday, even Horan’s teammates sensed something was about to change. Forward Alex Morgan said when she saw the referee pull Horan and van de Donk aside after the two exchanged shoves and heated words following the foul, and just before the corner kick that ensued, she “felt like something was going to happen.”United States Coach Vlatko Andonovski said the response was typical of Horan.“She gets fouled, kicked, hurt and obviously it’s a very difficult moment,” Andonovski said. “And instead of crying about it, she just goes and makes a statement and basically that shows everyone in the world the direction that the game is going to take.”Andonovski said he was especially proud that Horan and other veterans had continued to press for a winning goal after Horan tied the score, showing the younger players on the U.S. team how to take control of a game. Horan and players like Ertz and Lavelle, he said, “carried the younger ones, or in a way showed the younger ones what this game is all about.”One of those players, the 21-year-old Trinity Rodman, said she had been impressed by Horan’s ability to “flip a switch” and go “from trash talking to putting a ball in the back of the net.”It may have been why Andonovski chose to make only one substitution in Thursday’s game, sending on Lavelle for Savannah DeMelo at halftime to try to inject some energy into the U.S. midfield. He refrained from making more changes, he said, “because I thought we had control of the game, I thought we were knocking on the door of scoring a goal.Horan, center, celebrating her goal.Buda Mendes/Getty Images“We were around the goal the whole time,” he added, “and I just didn’t want to disrupt the rhythm.”It was only after Horan’s goal, though, and after being outplayed in the first half, that the United States began to look crisper and more determined.Andonovski suggested the final 30 minutes, not the first 60, were representative of what he and fans could expect as the team moves deeper into the tournament, and as the connections between players young and old start to get more familiar.“What you saw in the second half is what you’re going to see going forward, as a baseline,” he said. “I think that we’re just going to get better from game to game, and we’re going to be a lot more efficient as well.” More

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      Biggest Gap for U.S. World Cup Players: Their Ages

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      The U.S. team includes past champions, veterans of the equal pay fight and 14 players experiencing their first World Cup. How they come together will shape the future.The story seemed like one Alex Morgan might tell around a campfire.Back in the day, the 34-year-old Morgan likes to begin, when players like her needed to find their way to their soccer games, they used something called MapQuest. It wasn’t an app on your smartphone, the kind with a reassuring voice that announced each turn and flashed a digital dot to show your location.It was a website, Morgan said, that generated a map and a list of step-by-step directions, which you had to print out on actual paper. Sometimes it fell to preteen kids like Morgan to read out the turns while a parent drove.“That was such a hard time,” the United States defender Naomi Girma, 23, recalled telling Morgan after hearing the story recently, feigning sympathy. “And she was like, ‘You don’t even know.’”Sports are often about gaps: talent gaps, experience gaps, compensation gaps. And in the weeks and months before the Women’s World Cup that began on Thursday in Australia and New Zealand, the players on the U.S. national women’s soccer team have found an unlikely bond in jokes, jabs and stories related to what may be their most notable feature: a generation gap.The team’s oldest player is Megan Rapinoe, 38, the iconic athlete who recently announced that she would retire after this World Cup and the end of her current professional season. The youngest is Alyssa Thompson, who is 18, just graduated high school and still lives with her parents. At least three of Thompson’s teammates — Morgan, Crystal Dunn and Julie Ertz — have children of their own.Thompson said that her older teammates sometimes play music that she doesn’t recognize, but that the different age groups find a middle ground with Cardi B. Sophia Smith, a 22-year-old forward, said she does recognize the music, though by genre, not by artist. “They sound like what my parents listen to,” she said.Alyssa Thompson, who at 18 is the youngest member of the squad, just graduated high school and still lives with her parents.Joe Puetz/Getty ImagesSmith admitted last month that she never has used a CD player and that she refuses to watch TV shows or movies if the video quality is “grainy.” One exception: videos of the 1999 Women’s World Cup final, a historic victory by the United States that spurred rapid growth of women’s soccer in America. Unlike some of her teammates, Smith has no memory of watching that team play — the final was played more than a year before she was born.Others recall a different game — the 2015 World Cup final, and Carli Lloyd’s stunning goal from midfield — as their touchstone moment. Four of their current teammates have far more vivid memories of that afternoon, because they played in the match.That generation gap, and how the U.S. team deals with it, is likely to be one of the prominent stories of the World Cup. But it is also a symbol of the latest pivotal moment in the evolution of the women’s game: a time of contentious debate about equal pay and human rights, and of battles for investment and demand for equal treatment with men. For the United States, a four-time World Cup winner, this tournament also presents a new, unrelenting challenge from rivals rising to meet the Americans’ level as leaders, spokeswomen and champions.Lindsey Horan, the U.S. team’s co-captain, is one of the veterans who won’t let the younger players forget that they have a role to play in that fight, and that winning games and championships is at the core of it.“There’s always pressure in this team,” said Horan, 29. “We live in pressure, and I think we make that known to any new, younger player coming into this environment that you’re going to live in that for the rest of your career on this national team.”The job for Coach Vlatko Andonovski has been to build a smooth-running machine from parts built in different eras. What makes the task even trickier for him this time is that the players at his disposal have a wide range of experience. Fourteen members of the 23-player roster are World Cup rookies. A few are sliding into roles long patrolled by veterans who are now injured, or retired, or facing their final games. It’s Andonovski’s first World Cup, too. “I’m not worried about the inexperience,” Andonovski said. “In fact, I’m excited about the energy and enthusiasm that the young players bring, the intensity and the drive as well. Actually, I think that will be one of our advantages.”“I’m excited about the energy and enthusiasm that the young players bring, the intensity and the drive as well,” said U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBuilding chemistry among teammates isn’t that easy, though, especially when time is running out. Not even regular doses of Cardi B can change that. The team’s recent record reflects its struggles under Andonovski to fit new players into the roster of experienced ones.At the Tokyo Olympics — Andonovski’s first major tournament as U.S. coach — the team finished a disappointing third. Canada beat the Americans to reach the final, then won the gold medal. Just last fall, the United States endured its first three-game losing streak since 1993. One of the losses, to Germany, broke a 71-game winning streak on U.S. soil.The rest of the world, finally, appears to be catching up.Janine Beckie, a forward for Canada, said there were two or three teams at the 2019 World Cup that were strong enough to win it. But now, only four years later, she estimated that six or seven had to be considered serious title contenders.“This is definitely the most wide-open World Cup in history,” Beckie said. “I’m really interested in how this young U.S. team goes through this tournament. They can either have a fresh mind-set and recover quickly from game to game, or they can have players who are overwhelmed by the length of the tournament. Being there for a month from start to finish is really difficult, especially when you haven’t experienced that before.”That is why the older players on the U.S. team have been trying to prepare the newcomers for what to expect. So as they fielded questions about what to pack for a monthlong trip to the other side of the world — headphones, books and a favorite pair of comfy sweatpants were the bare minimum — the older players also have gone out of their way to make the younger players feel as if they have been on the team forever.“The important thing is, how do we make the young players feel comfortable?” said Emily Sonnett, who was a member of the 2019 championship team and this month is back for her second World Cup. “Because if you’re not having fun, why be here? And if you’re not comfortable, how are you ever going to play at your best?”Players young and old have come to learn that leading by example can be infectious. Rapinoe, whose outspokenness has at times made her the public face of her squad and her sport, has said the U.S. team considers it “incredibly important” to use its platform to “represent America and a sense of patriotism that kind of flips that term on its head.”For example, Rapinoe and others, including Morgan and the injured captain Becky Sauerbrunn, have spoken out about social issues like equal pay, sexual abuse, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and racial equality.Megan Rapinoe has said the U.S. team considers it important to “represent America and a sense of patriotism that kind of flips that term on its head.” Marlena Sloss for The New York TimesThe veterans haven’t pushed the younger players to be as involved in the same issues, players on both ends of the generation gap said. But many of the younger ones acknowledged that they feel a sense of duty to keep that aspect of the team alive.Girma said she was inspired by the national team’s activism to speak out about social justice issues while she was in college at Stanford. Shaken by the death of a college teammate there who killed herself, Girma and several of her contemporaries are now using their voices to highlight the need for mental health awareness.Forward Trinity Rodman, 21, said that responsibility is one the newer players have begun to embrace — “I’ve definitely tried to be more than a soccer player,” she said — but that every member of the team was united by a goal they all share.“We want to win so bad,” Rodman said, “and we’re going to do whatever we can to win.”That way, someday, they will have their own campfire stories to tell. More

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      Women’s World Cup Contenders

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      The Women’s World Cup, which opens this week, is the biggest in its 32-year history, but it may also be the most open field the tournament has seen.While plenty of the 32 teams descending on Australia and New Zealand probably have modest ambitions for the next month, it is not a stretch to say that almost half of the field might regard themselves as serious title contenders. (Some more accurately than others.) These 10 countries are the most likely to stick around all the way until the end.United StatesForward Trinity Rodman is one of 14 U.S. players headed to their first World Cup.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressTwo things can be true at once. By common consensus, Vlatko Andonovski’s team arrived in New Zealand as the favorite to win the tournament. It has the aura of experience, the dazzling jolt of youth and the deep bedrock of talent to lift a third straight World Cup. It has a psychological edge, too: It has been the game’s superpower for so long that respect can manifest as awe.At the same time, the undisputed primacy the United States has enjoyed for more than a decade has never been more fragile. There is a risk that this squad will fail the Goldilocks test: Some players are too old, some are too young, and so perhaps none are just right. Europe’s major nations have closed the gap. In the space of a month last year, the Americans lost to England, Spain and Germany. The United States has the squad to emerge as champion. But for the first time in some time, it is not alone in that.EnglandRachel Daly started at left back in the Euros last summer. Now she is England’s most potent striker.David Rogers/Getty ImagesExpectation hangs heavy on Sarina Wiegman’s England. The Lionesses won the European Championship on home soil last summer, the team’s first major honor, and followed that with a victory in the Finalissima — a game between the European and South American champions — earlier this year. Winning the World Cup would be the natural conclusion to a trajectory that has been on a steep upward curve for 10 years.Fate, though, has intervened. Wiegman has lost her captain, Leah Williamson; her most creative player, Fran Kirby; and her most potent attacking threat, Beth Mead, to injury. Millie Bright made the squad but is still, strictly speaking, recovering from knee surgery. Wiegman is an astute enough coach — and she has enough talent at her disposal — to disguise those losses. But she will be doing so on the fly.AustraliaSam Kerr will shoulder the hopes of one of the host nations.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is difficult not to see the co-host less as “Australia” and more as “Sam Kerr and Guests.” At 30, Kerr, the Chelsea striker, may well be the finest player in the world. She is a totem for her country. She is the face of the tournament, the person expected to deliver what she has referred to as a “Cathy Freeman moment.” She is the star on which Australia’s hopes hang.That assessment is not quite true. Tony Gustavsson’s squad is drawn largely from the major leagues of Europe and the N.W.S.L. In Caitlin Foord, Hayley Raso and Alanna Kennedy, the supporting cast is a strong one. Its momentum, too, is considerable: Australia has won eight of its last nine games, including a milestone victory against England. Kerr will have to deliver, of course, but she is far from alone.The NetherlandsThe Netherlands lost to the United States in the World Cup final in 2019. Its path runs through the Americans again.Rob Engelaar/EPA, via ShutterstockIn 2019, the Dutch emerged as the standard-bearer for Europe’s coming force, an advertisement for the game’s shifting power base. They fell agonizingly short, losing to the United States in the final. Progress since then has been patchy, as they have lost Wiegman, who left to coach England, before falling in the quarterfinals of the European Championship last summer.The core of the team that made the final four years ago — Danielle van de Donk, Jackie Groenen, Jill Roord, Lieke Martens — remains, and the Dutch have the talent to make a deep run once more. Two things stand in their way: the absence of striker Vivianne Miedema through injury and an unfortunate draw for the group stage. The Dutch face the Americans early; defeat in that game will most likely mean a tougher route for the remainder of their stay.CanadaChristine Sinclair has played 323 games for Canada.LM Otero/Associated PressThe Canadians have made precious little impact on the latter rounds of the World Cup in the last two decades, extending their stay beyond the first knockout round only once. Yet even that, on home soil in 2015, lasted only until the quarterfinals.In many ways, it is hard to see that changing this time around. Christine Sinclair is 40; Janine Beckie is out, another victim of women’s soccer’s A.C.L. epidemic; Canada has won only one of its last five games and has been drawn in the same group as Australia. But there is a resilience to this team that should not be underappreciated: It is only two years, after all, since Canada — completely overlooked then as now — won gold at the Tokyo Olympics.BrazilMarta is headed to her sixth World Cup with Brazil.Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersOn some level, Brazil’s stay in this World Cup will be seen as Marta’s valedictory tour: a sixth and (presumably) final tournament turned into a lap of honor for a 37-year-old player regarded by some as the best of all time.It is hard, certainly, to believe that it will end with Marta’s repeating Lionel Messi’s trick and finally winning the honor that would mean more to her than any other. Brazil’s squad is not as strong as previous editions, and none of them were strong enough to overcome the superpowers of North America and Europe, either. Still, in Pia Sundhage, Brazil has a canny, adroit coach, and the likes of Debinha, Kerolin and Geyse mean Marta may not have to bear the load alone.SpainAlexia Putellas of Spain is the reigning world player of the year.Steve Luciano/Associated PressMore than anyone — even England — Spain should be the biggest threat to the United States’ crown this summer. Its national team is, after all, based largely on the Barcelona team that has become the dominant force in European club soccer. Alexia Putellas, while most likely not fully recovered from the knee injury that kept her out of the Euros last year, is the reigning world player of the year. Spain has lost just once in a year.The problem is that Spain has been engulfed by civil war between the players and the country’s soccer federation since last summer. Though an uneasy truce has been called — allowing some of the 15 players who had demanded the dismissal of the coach, Jorge Vilda, to return — the effects are still being felt. A dozen players are still missing, and Vilda must find a way to instill a team spirit in a squad consisting of both rebels and their replacements.FranceWendie Renard, center, and Kadidiatou Diani had threatened not to play for France under its former coach.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Spanish might have had the least ideal preparation for a major tournament, but kudos to the French for giving them a run for their money. Corinne Diacre, the longstanding coach who had lost the faith of a considerable number of her players, was finally ousted in March. She was replaced by Hervé Renard, a globe-trotting coach of some renown but absolutely no experience in the women’s game.He has, at least, restored some familiar faces to the squad: Wendie Renard and Kadidiatou Diani, both of whom had refused to play under Diacre, are back. Amandine Henry, the vastly experienced midfielder, had been recalled, too, only to suffer a calf injury that will keep her out of the tournament. France’s hopes, now, rest on the new coach’s being able to get the best out of a team he has only just encountered.GermanyLena Oberdorf and Germany will enter the World Cup off a run of puzzling results.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf anything at all is certain about this tournament, it is that the Germans will reach the quarterfinals. In eight attempts, they have never failed to do so, and given a kindly group draw — Morocco, Colombia and South Korea — there is little reason to believe they will not make the last eight again.Whether Coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg can steer her team any further, though, is open to question. Germany has a well-balanced squad — two outstanding goalkeepers, the emerging star power of Lena Oberdorf, the creativity of Lina Magull, the goals of Svenja Huth and Alexandra Popp — and finished as runner-up in last summer’s European Championship. But its form is sputtering: It has lost to Brazil and Zambia in the last couple of months and just squeezed past Vietnam in a warm-up match last month.SwedenKosovare Asllani and Sweden finished third at the 2019 World Cup and second at the Tokyo Olympics.Kimmo Brandt/EPA, via ShutterstockNobody ever thinks about Sweden. Sweden might have one silver and three bronze medals to show for its eight previous World Cups, and it might be a reliable force in the European Championship, but the operating assumption is always that Sweden is not a genuine contender.It is worth pointing out, then, that Sweden not only has the likes of Fridolina Rolfo, Stina Blackstenius and Hanna Bennison to call on, but that it made the semifinals of the Euros last year, and it swatted aside the United States on the way to the Olympic final two years ago. Sweden is a threat. But nobody ever thinks about Sweden. More

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      U.S. Women’s World Cup Roster Reflects a Team in Transition

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      Form and injuries affected the players available to Coach Vlatko Andonovski as he picked a soccer team facing perhaps the toughest challenge in its history.Here’s a sentence you see every four years: The United States is a favorite to win the Women’s World Cup.Why shouldn’t the public believe the hype this time?The United States’ résumé is top of its class: It is the No. 1-ranked women’s soccer team in the world and the two-time defending world champion. And unlike any other women’s team, it has four tiny golden stars sewn above its jersey crest to show the program’s pedigree of four World Cup titles.The team’s World Cup roster was announced on Wednesday, and the Americans are set to arrive in July at the tournament in Australia and New Zealand with a meticulously curated mix of players with and without experience on soccer’s biggest stage.Nine players on the team have lifted the championship trophy before. For three of those players — forwards Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe and defender Kelley O’Hara — this will be their fourth World Cup. For two other players — goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher and midfielder Julie Ertz — this will be their third. Morgan said she is “just as excited and anxious” for this World Cup as she was for her first one.But knowing what it takes to win and doing it with one of the most inexperienced teams the United States has ever taken to a World Cup are very different things. Of the 23 players named to the team, 14 will be World Cup rookies, including a pair of young forwards, 18-year-old Alyssa Thompson and 21-year-old Trinity Rodman.One of those rookies, midfielder Savannah DeMelo, has never even played for the senior national team before. The last time an uncapped player like DeMelo was on the U.S. Women’s World Cup roster was 20 years ago.Yet Coach Vlatko Andonovski said he was confident that this team had the talent to win a record third straight Women’s World Cup title, saying in a statement that the United States has “a roster with depth and versatility, and that will help us take on all the challenges that will be coming our way.”In a video call with reporters, he added: “We want to do something that has never been done before, and we believe in the quality of the team.”Andonovski, who coached the team to a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, spent the past few years trying to rebuild his squad as this tournament loomed, easing out veterans and introducing new talent in an effort to construct a roster that he thinks can win this year and succeed into the future.He was faced with a few surprises as he tweaked the roster, which made a hard process even harder. Just last week, he lost his captain, defender Becky Sauerbrunn, who was ruled out with a lingering foot injury. Injuries also cost him the services of Sam Mewis, a midfield fixture of the 2019 World Cup champions, and more recently the presence of two valuable attacking options, Mallory Swanson, who appeared to be peaking at the perfect time, and the Brazilian-born Catarina Macario.Still, Andonovski had a core of stalwarts he could count on, including stars like Morgan and Rapinoe, who bring years of international experience as well as their gravitas as two of the most famous and most outspoken female athletes in the world. He also had midfielder Rose Lavelle, the breakout star of the 2019 tournament after she made scoring look all too easy. Lavelle and Lindsey Horan will offer a familiar combination of grit and flash in midfield.There will be many new stars, including Sophia Smith, 22, who was last year’s most valuable player of the National Women’s Soccer League, and Rodman, the 2021 N.W.S.L. rookie of the year and daughter of Dennis Rodman, the former N.B.A. All-Star.Sophia Smith was the 2022 M.V.P. of the N.W.S.L. for her play with the Portland Thorns.Jeff Curry/USA Today SportsThe Americans’ first game will be July 22 against Vietnam in Auckland, New Zealand — 9 p.m. Eastern time on July 21. That will be followed by the team’s biggest game since the last World Cup: a rematch with the other 2019 finalist, the Netherlands, that will probably leave the winner with a much easier path in the knockout stage.Andonovski might have surprised himself with some of the names he had penciled in. But as with several other top teams, injuries forced him to alter his plans.Sauerbrunn, 38, announced last week that she would miss the World Cup with a foot injury. She was not only a dogged central defender for years, but also a revered role model for her teammates: the team’s Zen master of confidence and calm, not to mention the anchor of its back line as it won the past two World Cups.Her announcement came only weeks after Swanson, who had been Andonovski’s most dangerous forward this year, tore the patellar tendon in her left knee. Other players with World Cup experience, including Mewis, Abby Dahlkemper, Christen Press and Tobin Heath, have been out with injuries or are still coming back from surgeries. Macario, whose international career is on a steep upswing, simply ran out of time to get back up to speed after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee last year while playing in France.There will be, however, many familiar and experienced players when Andonovski and his team gather for a training camp next week in California. Ertz, 10 months after having a baby, has stepped directly back into the team’s midfield. Crystal Dunn, who gave birth to a son 13 months ago, will continue to be a rock on defense, as will Emily Sonnett. A versatile player, Dunn can be moved to other positions, including midfielder. Both Dunn and Sonnett played in the last World Cup.Julie Ertz returned to competition with the national team in April, 10 months after the birth of her son.Dustin Safranek/USA Today SportsCasual fans will have to learn some new names. In her World Cup debut, Naomi Girma, a 23-year-old defender for the San Diego Wave, former Stanford team captain and daughter of Ethiopian immigrants, will be in line to replace Sauerbrunn. DeMelo is having a strong year for her N.W.S.L. team, which is partly why she was given this chance. And three young forwards — Smith, Rodman and Thompson — have what it takes to push Morgan, Rapinoe and Lynn Williams up front.Thompson was called up after Swanson’s injury; she is only the fourth teenager to be named to the United States’ World Cup team and will become the youngest U.S. women’s soccer player at the tournament since 1995. The first draft pick in this year’s N.W.S.L. draft, Thompson has the energy, skill and phenomenal speed to be a generational player. But she is also just out of high school.“We just have such a great group,” Smith said. “I think no matter who you put out there, we’re going to get the job done.”About Thompson, Smith said: “I’m so excited for Alyssa. I think she’s so deserving of this and she’s proven herself. She’s ready for this, and I just can’t wait to kind of go through this with her.”With all the new players mingled with the old, it remains to be seen if the team that shows up in New Zealand will have the swagger of previous ones. The team’s pre-eminence in the women’s game has been under threat from the growing investments, and the growing power, of rivals in Europe. Last fall, the United States lost three games in a row for the first time since 1993.That the defeats came against three European opponents — Germany, England and Spain — was an unmistakable message to outsiders: The United States still ranks among the favorites. But its margin may be finer than ever. More

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      U.S. Women Beat Haiti to Open Concacaf W Championship

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      The Americans can qualify for the 2023 Women’s World Cup and the 2024 Olympics by winning a regional championship. Their first step was a win over Haiti.The Women’s World Cup is a year away and the Paris Olympics don’t start for more than two, but both tournaments are the primary focus of the United States women’s national team over the next two weeks.The first goal? Qualify for them. The Americans took their first step on that front Monday night by opening play in the new Concacaf women’s championship with a 3-0 victory over Haiti in Monterrey, Mexico.Alex Morgan scored twice in the first half and Midge Purce added a late clincher in a wild game that involved disallowed goals, a missed penalty and an overturned red card.The revamped eight-team tournament, officially branded the Concacaf W Championship, is serving a dual role — as the qualifying tournament for next summer’s Women’s World Cup and for the 2024 Paris Olympics.Under its new format — a group stage followed by a knockout round — the first task should be a simple one for the Americans: The top two finishers in each four-team group qualify automatically for the Women’s World Cup, where the United States is the two-time defending champion.The latter job may be a little more tricky. Only the champion in Mexico will claim an automatic place in the 2024 Summer Games, while the runner-up and third-place nations will have to contest a Concacaf Olympic playoff in September 2023. That would be a bit more jeopardy than Coach Vlatko Andonovski and his world-beating and well-paid players might want at this current moment in their evolution.Coach Vlatko Andonovski is trying to balance past success with his team’s future.Daniel Becerril/ReutersAndonovski has made no secret that he is managing a team in transition, and that has made these games — every game, really — an important chance for players to impress the coaching staff, and ensure they are in his plans for the next year or more. It is another opportunity for rising players to force their way into the mix, and for veteran players to defend their positions. Not all have succeeded.The future of the U.S. team, regardless of what happens in Mexico, remains a bit of an incomplete picture. Morgan, who scored twice on Monday, and Megan Rapinoe both received their first call-ups to the team since October for the Concacaf event. But Morgan, 33, is already defending her position from rising stars like Catarino Macario, who is currently out with a knee injury. And young forwards like Mallory Pugh, Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman all play the same position as Rapinoe, who turned 37 on Tuesday.“It’s not easy being a forward in the United States right now,” Andonovski said when he announced his roster for the Concacaf championship. “Obviously, it’s great, but it’s not easy because the competition is getting bigger and bigger.”Similar battles are playing out across the field in every position, in every roster decision, as the United States transitions from a roster that led it to two straight World Cup titles to one that might carry it to a third against regional rivals like Canada, the reigning Olympic gold medalist, and European contenders like Sweden, Germany, Spain, the Netherland and England — among others — who are contending the European championship this month.The Americans’ remaining group-stage schedule includes games against Jamaica (on Thursday) and host Mexico (on Monday). Canada leads Group B, which features Trinidad & Tobago, Costa Rica and Panama. The final is July 18.To get there, Andonovski will rely on a blend of the experience, the talent and the generations at his disposal: Of the 23 players on the U.S. roster, seven are in their 30s but eight are 25 or younger. And for now, he has been making no promises to anyone.“It doesn’t mean that all these players that have done well in the past are just going to come back here in the next camp because they’ve done well a year ago or two years ago,” Andonovski said in February, when an earlier roster also omitted several accomplished veterans.“There’s a reason why we’re not calling Mia Hamm or Julie Foudy in camp, right? So the same goes here: They need to perform.” More

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      USWNT's Catarina Macario Is Just Getting Started

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      She learned soccer in Brazil and developed in the United States. Now a pro in France, the 21-year-old forward is proving she belongs alongside the world’s best players.The first steps of Catarina Macario’s path toward professional soccer are easy to pick out, even in the grainy videotapes of her playing the sport as a girl. She doesn’t scissor over the ball so much as dance over it. She darts past defenders or lobs the ball over them. She leaves goalkeepers flat-footed.Even before she had entered her teens, Macario had mastered the two skills every Brazilian striker learns early: how to put the ball in the net and how to race toward the nearest camera to celebrate.And yet Macario was different. Soccer is ubiquitous in Brazil, so it was only natural that she gravitated to the game played on its beaches, fields and streets. But as a young girl growing up in São Luís, a coastal city in Brazil’s northeast, and Brasília, the capital, she used to wonder if becoming a professional was even viable.In a country where 47 percent of the population identifies as mixed race, Macario was a triple outlier: a girl with dark skin who played soccer. Discrimination and a lack of opportunities were common. So were insults. She was called a monkey. A lesbian. Just for wanting to play.“Sadly, I was often the only girl at that time,” said Macario, whose first forays in the sport were games with classmates in a futsal league and on boys’ teams. “It was very much so shamed upon to be a girl and playing soccer.”She added: “I knew I loved soccer and I wanted to be a professional soccer player, but I would question whether it would even be possible just because of that.”Less than a decade later, Macario, 21, has carved out a place for herself alongside the top players in the world.Macario signed with Lyon in January. It is battling P.S.G. for the French title.Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn January, she turned pro, announcing she would forgo her senior year at Stanford University — where she scored 63 goals in 68 games — to sign with the world’s most dominant professional team, Olympique Lyonnais Féminin. Weeks later, her switch in citizenship complete, she made her debut for the World Cup-winning U.S. women’s national team (and scored in her second game). On Tuesday, she was expected to be named to the United States roster for an important pre-Olympic tournament.If Macario’s rise continues, and if she can beat out a who’s who of more experienced players — Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, Tobin Heath, Christen Press, Lynn Williams — for a place in the American attack, she could be headed to the Olympics by July, and to a World Cup by 2023.“I think she is the future of what the U.S. women’s national team wants to be,” Macario’s former coach at Stanford, Paul Ratcliffe, said in a phone interview. “I envision they could build a team around her, that’s how highly I think of her as a player.”Sometimes, she can hardly believe how far she has come, and how fast.“To me, I’m essentially just this little kid that’s going to play with the best players in the world,” Macario said in a video call this spring from her apartment in Lyon, France. “It’s a little intimidating, but at the same time, that’s the challenge — that’s why I chose to be here.”On the ball, Macario is eye-catchingly quick, powerful enough to create space, deft enough to leave defenders grasping at the ones she has vacated. After Macario’s first goal for the U.S. national team, Megan Rapinoe called her a “different kind of player.” Others have placed her on an higher plane: comparing her to Brazil’s six-time world player of the year, Marta.Even in her childhood, Macario stood out. She says she can’t recall the number of lamps she and her older brother broke while playing soccer in their apartment in Brazil, but she remembers the hours she dedicated to extra training with her father before practices to nurture her talent. It was what she used to answer the discrimination, the obstacles and the people who told her a girl didn’t have a place in soccer, and show them she deserved one “based on what I did on the field.”“Maybe,” she added, “I’m even better than you.”When she turned 12, though, a rule barred her from continuing to play with boys in Brasília, where her family was living. Without any competitive girls’ teams as an option, the family took a leap of faith, Macario said, and decided to allow her to move to the United States with her father and brother to secure a better future.When the family arrived in San Diego, they didn’t speak English, and were grappling with the separation from Macario’s mother, who remained in Brazil, where she worked as a doctor. The long-distance relationship continued for seven years. Her mother still lives in Brazil, with plans to travel to France.“The one thing that was keeping us together, in a way, was the fact that I was playing soccer and that I was getting better,” Macario said.A brilliant youth career attracted the attention of top college teams, but there was a constant pressure, she said, to keep going, to make the family’s sacrifices worth it.Macario was a record-setting scorer and two-time national champion at Stanford.Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group, via Associated PressHer steep rise from college star to full-time professional was swift after she became an American citizen last October. Hours earlier, she had been called up to her first training camp with the senior national team. But to be eligible to play, she first needed the approval of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. When it arrived in January, the U.S. women’s coach, Vlatko Andonovski, wasted no time bringing her into the fold.“Of course, as an immigrant to the U.S.A. myself, I understand how special it is to get that U.S. passport, so I’m really happy for her,” said Andonovski, a native of North Macedonia.Andonovski was in a select group of people from whom Macario sought guidance as she weighed the choice of a career in Europe or in the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States, where many of her national teammates play. The decision to go to Lyon was Macario’s, but Andonovski told her he supported whichever path she chose as long as her play continued at a high level. “Most important,” he said, “what she is getting in France is training with world-class players every day.”Moving to Europe is a nontraditional path for most American college players, though increasingly an option for national team stars. While her decision to go and to take on learning yet another language was difficult, Macario said her choice of playing for the United States over her birth country, Brazil, which had pursued her for years, was a simple one.“I left Brazil for a reason, and that was because my parents wanted a better life for my brother and I,” she said of moving to the United States. “For me, it’s home. It’s where I became who I am today.”“It’s a little intimidating,” Macario said of competing at the highest levels of women’s soccer, “but at the same time, that’s the challenge.”Gregg Newton/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd while the most surprising part of her trajectory — from youth scoring sensation in Southern California to national champion at Stanford to the women’s national team to Lyon — may be the speed with which it took place, she says she knows she still has quite a bit to learn.“I’m not up to that level yet,” she said of training against international teammates like Lyon defender Nikita Parris or alongside forwards she has long admired, like Lloyd. “During practices, they’re so intense. It almost makes the games easy.”Now she shares the field with them and others, and she expects to continue to do so for years to come. Looking forward, she said, her goals are simple.“Win everything,” she said, laughing. More