SAN DIEGO — United States women’s national team coach Emma Hayes played down the significance of the team’s first loss since she took charge last year, saying after Wednesday’s 2-1 defeat to Japan in the SheBelieves Cup that “development isn’t linear.”
“We’ve won the gold medal in the summer, and we are wanting to compete to win the World Cup, so we have to keep developing and development isn’t linear. It isn’t just in one direction. I think you need moments to give you a sense of where you are in that path,” Hayes said post-game at Snapdragon Stadium.
“But I think it’s exciting and I think our future is exciting regardless of the result. As I’ve said, we played one of the best teams in the world today, whose nucleus have played together for a long time, and it showed. So for us, we need to build the group and the larger pool that we think are going to progress us to the World Cup.”
Wednesday’s result meant Hayes and her roster finished second in the tournament to Japan, who lifted the SheBelieves title for the first time thanks to three consecutive victories. The USWNT finished the tournament with a 2W-0D-1L record.
Despite the first loss for Hayes after a previous 15W-2D-0L record in all competitions, the coach sounded an optimistic tone after being…
