The United States women have enough talent to win the World Cup. The United States women also don’t look anything like a team playing well enough to win a World Cup. On Sunday, the duality of the Americans’ lackluster World Cup to date shifts to the knockout stage, where they hope to avoid the worst finish in program history.
Of course, it had to be Sweden.
“We know them very well,” USA forward Alex Morgan said. “We know that [Sunday] is going to be a challenging game and we hope that knowing them so well will help us.”
Sweden and the USA have met in six of the past eight World Cups, but never previously in the knockout rounds. They are the third- and first-ranked teams in the world, respectively, and for one of them, Sunday’s exit from the tournament will be viewed as a massive failure. To date, their 2023 World Cup journeys could not be more different.
The USA eked out Group E by beating Vietnam and settling for draws with the Netherlands and Portugal. The Americans were outplayed for large stretches of each of those draws and were saved from a shocking group-stage exit only by a post that denied a late effort from Portugal. After expressing more measured disappointment immediately following the game, Andonovski earlier this week called the performance “crap”. The USA failed to connect passes or even show for the ball in space, and Portugal grew into the game controlled the tempo.
“For me, we accept the fact that we could have been out in the ball hit post on the other side, too,” Andonovski said on Saturday. “The fact that we’re in, we were lucky in the moment and we’re moving on. So, now we do everything possible so that that same situation doesn’t happen.”
Sweden, meanwhile, won all three group games, including a 5-0 trouncing of Italy. That result in their second match allowed Sweden to heavily rotate the lineup and rest starters, which stands in stark contrast to a USA team that used only one substitution against the Netherlands and had to secure a result at Eden Park on Tuesday with a similar group of starters.
History is on the Americans’ side as winners of 23 of the 42 meetings against Sweden. And while Sweden have won only seven of those games, among their victories was the most recent meeting, an emphatic 3-0 win for the Swedes at the Tokyo Olympics.
“I don’t care about favorites and things like that,” Sweden coach Peter Gerhardsson said on Saturday. “You play a game and you have to handle it. … We have the possibility to win the game and that’s the most important thing for me and the team.
“We know that the US is a very good team. Sometimes we can talk about a regression to its means. If you have played very bad, it’s going [to get] better. If you play very well, it’s sometimes towards the middle. So, I don’t know what the US thinks about their performance so far. And I don’t care about it. I care about what we can do and I think we have the possibility to win the game.”
Andonovski has faced repeated questions for his lineup rigidity amid his team’s struggles, but he will be forced to make at least one major decision for his XI against Sweden. Midfielder Rose Lavelle is suspended due to yellow-card accumulation, a huge blow for the USA in their search for answers. Lavelle is the most creative player on the roster and had just returned from a long injury layoff prior to the World Cup to earn her first start in over three months against Portugal. Her insertion into the game at half-time against the Netherlands completely changed the complexion of the match. Lavelle assisted Lindsey Horan’s equalizer to help the USA earn a crucial point.
Andonovski started Savannah DeMelo in the No 10 role in the first two games of the World Cup despite DeMello earning a spot on the roster without having previously been capped. She held her own at times, especially against a physical Dutch side, but Andonovski could also choose to play the more mercurial Ashley Sanchez on Sunday. Sanchez had been developed as Lavelle’s backup for the past year but has not yet played at this World Cup. Andonovski mentioned both Sanchez and DeMelo by name on Saturday.
“Rose is a great player,” Andonovski said. “She’s one of the best players in the world and not having her is definitely going to change some of the ways we’re going to approach the game, or certain phases of the game. But at the same time, we have great players on the roster that are here for a reason, that are here for moments like this, that are ready and able to step in at any point and time.”
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At stake in this match for the USA is the continued quest for an unprecedented third straight World Cup title, but also the possibility of the team’s worst World Cup finish in history. The USA have never finished worse than third at a World Cup. This is a new USA team, however, one with 14 players on the roster at their first World Cup. Whether this new group of USA players has the same mentality as past generations remains a prominent narrative hovering over the team, but the reality why they’ve struggled is that they have lacked tactical flexibility and technical quality. Without that, mentality doesn’t matter.
“Football is interesting, because you can talk about confidence; you have self-confidence, you’re very good,” Gerhardsson said as he held up his left hand to gesture as if he was holding a personified version of the word. Then he held up his right hand: “Then you can talk about revenge, underdog mentality. For me, that’s not what’s going to make the difference [Sunday]. It’s the players, how they play. The history is nothing. You have to make a good game [Sunday]. If we want to win a game, maybe we have to [play] our best game this year or a [in] couple years and I hope that USA, the same thing. If they want to beat Sweden, they have to do a very, very good performance.”
Good performances have been hard to come by at this World Cup for the USA, and they struggled through large stretches of the past year, including in the fall when the team sustained a three-game losing streak for the first time in 30 years. Their highly regarded set of forwards have struggled in front of goal and their midfield has been stretched to the point of nonexistence at times at this World Cup.
Sweden poses a different threat altogether for the USA. Fridolina Rolfö and Stina Blackstenius are dangerous in front of goal, and the Swedes have a height advantage that that they’ve already put to good use by scoring three of their five goals against Italy off corner kicks.
Morgan, a co-captain, took ownership of the team’s struggles ahead of the match. She was there in 2015, when the USA looked terrible in the group stage and eventually flipped their form in the knockout rounds to win the World Cup. Morgan knows that form can change quickly in a World Cup – and that the change needs to happen now for the USA.
“It hasn’t been the tournament that I would have hoped,” Morgan said, “but at the same time, having this incredible opportunity in front of us in the round of 16, facing Sweden, a team we know extremely well, I think that there’s no question where we’re highly motivated to play in this game tomorrow.”