In the days since the United States team narrowly avoided an embarrassing early elimination from the Women’s World Cup, Lindsey Horan, its co-captain, has been working the room.
Horan wants a word, with many of the team’s veterans but especially the 14 World Cup rookies. So she has been tapping teammates on their shoulders and knocking on their hotel room doors and pulling them aside in training. Hey, she might say, can we chat for a few minutes?
The message Horan has taken to every player in the dressing room is a simple one. Ignore “the noise” from critics of the team’s play. Embrace the high expectations that shadow the U.S. team. Remember why you started playing this game in the first place.
“Find the joy,” Horan says, and the team will find its way.
Perhaps as much as any U.S. player, Horan, who was named co-captain less than a month ago, has shouldered the burden of its uneven performances at this World Cup. Much has gone wrong, she admitted on Thursday, days before the United States will face Sweden in a round-of-16 match in Melbourne that will end the World Cup for one of them. But she has seen good things, too. And she has seen enough to know it can all snap back into place quickly. Because it has before.
“Once we get a little bit more of that joy back…
