With the game goalless at Wembley on 86 minutes, United States full-back Emily Fox waltzed into the England penalty area. It was then that Emma Hayes was confronted with an alarming realization.
“I look, and there’s no one in the box,” U.S. women’s national team manager Hayes said of that sequence of play in Saturday’s 0-0 friendly with England. “Our mentality has to be better than that. That’s what I will be demanding from the team.”
The sight of Fox’s tempting cross fizzing across the goal only to be scooped up benignly by goalkeeper Mary Earps told a story: for the second time in Hayes’ brief tenure, her side had failed to score in a match.
Not that this is a horror story. The world’s top-ranked team do not have a goalscoring problem. In their three previous friendlies — last month against Iceland (a double-header) and Argentina — the team scored three goals in each, totting up an aggregate score of 9-2. In the 13 matches Hayes presided over before facing England, the USWNT scored 28 times, a healthy average of just over twice a game.
But, the key question heading into an away meeting with the European champions and No.2-ranked team in the world was how would the new Olympic champions fare without the self-ascribed “Triple Espresso” of Sophia…
