After the United States women’s national team spent much of the last World Cup cycle slowly turning over the roster, that process has ramped up in 2024 ahead of the Olympics. Program stalwarts such as Julie Ertz, Kelley O’Hara and Megan Rapinoe have been ushered out of inclusion. Alex Morgan did not make the cut. Longtime captain Becky Sauerbrunn hasn’t been involved since March.
Part of this is an inevitable necessity. The USWNT has slipped to fifth in FIFA’s latest world rankings, a table they’ve topped for most of the past three decades. A bronze medal showing at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 was followed by a round-of-16 exit at the Women’s World Cup last year — a poor return from the Vlatko Andonovski era.
At last, Emma Hayes has arrived from dominating the Women’s Super League with Chelsea and will lead this team to the Games in France this summer and beyond. U.S. Soccer decided the serial winner from the English club game was worth the wait, running the USWNT under interim manager Twila Kilgore for nine months as Hayes finished her tenure in west London. The tradeoff was a limited window for these players to acclimate to their new coach and her system, with only 360 minutes in friendly matches to get tournament-ready.
Because of this, it’s hard to…
