STREET. PAUL, Minn. — U.S. women's national team head coach Emma Hayes is still learning some American sports lingo in her first weeks on the job.
On Tuesday, in a steady rain at Allianz Field that reminded the British coach of home, Hayes implored her team to take down a South Korean team that rarely threatened the Americans but was currently losing only for a goal.
“'I want you to put the pedal to the metal,'” Hayes recalled telling the team. “AND [assistant coach Denise Reddy] He told me, 'Don't ever say that again!'”
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As uncomfortable as it was, it worked. The USWNT scored twice more, including a debut goal by 16-year-old midfielder Lily Yohannes in her first international match, to win 3-0.
Now comes the decisive moment for Hayes, to borrow another uniquely American sports phrase. After two games in charge and just over a week of training, he will have to select his 18-player Olympic squad in the coming weeks. The performances of some players on Tuesday made the job much more difficult.
Yohannes rose to that list after making an immediate impact in his long-awaited debut. His late goal marked a solid 20 minutes of midfield distribution, including a pass to Trinity Rodman moments before that led to Rodman firing off the crossbar.
The midfield, however, was already full even before Yohannes entered the field. The USWNT's starting trio of Korbin Albert, Rose Lavelle and captain Lindsey Horan helped control the match Tuesday against a South Korean team that once again sat in a low block of five defenders. Hayes has praised Horan throughout this camp as a team leader, and Lavelle is a household name who earned his 100th cap on Tuesday; She is arguably the most creative player on the team.
Albert is much newer to the mix, but the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder has quickly shown that she can compete at this level. On Tuesday, Albert and Horan combined to dictate the pace of the match, patiently waiting for the right moments to snap South Korea out of their defensive ways. He wasn't always perfect, but he was effective at the right times. Above all, he was patient.
“I think the most important thing for us is to be more patient on both sides of the ball, not just move forward every time,” Lavelle said. “I think it's just [being] patient with our movement, patient with our movement from side to side with the ball and finding different ways to beat their forwards, beat their midfield and beat them.”
Hayes made nine changes from the lineup that defeated South Korea 4-0 three days earlier in Colorado. The goal, Hayes said Monday, would be to give new players a chance to process the “overload” of information the staff had thrown at them all week and demonstrate that they can apply it in a game environment. Among the players apparently on the bubble to make Hayes' Olympic roster, Albert did as well as anyone on Tuesday.
However, there is context for his success on the field. Albert's previous social media activity, which emerged in March, appeared to support anti-LGBTQIA+ content and downplay an injury to former U.S. winger Megan Rapinoe. Albert apologized and the team had internal discussions at an April camp that were not shared publicly. Albert remained on that list and was called back to this camp.
Hayes made direct comments Saturday that he expects a tolerant environment in the locker room, and his words about the need for players to feel supported when they take the field came after Albert was booed by the home crowd in Colorado on Saturday.
“I want everyone to be patient,” Hayes said Saturday. “There are a lot of younger players. On the field they are learning, but they want to give everything for their shirt and they want to give everything for their country. Off the field, some make mistakes. Others have to learn. My job as a coach is to help teach them and guide them.”
In purely footballing terms (an oversimplification, no doubt), Hayes and his team appear to rate the versatile Albert, and the midfielder's performance on Tuesday will have reaffirmed this. How Albert, Yohannes and others potentially fit onto the USWNT's Olympic roster is the mental gymnastics that will occupy Hayes in the coming weeks. Horan and Lavelle are veterans with World Cup titles. Defensive midfielder Sam Coffey has become a regular, even alongside Albert in the team's Concacaf W Gold Cup triumph earlier this year, and is the best pure defensive midfielder of the group.
Then there are the questions of where to play versatile attackers Catarina Macario and Jaedyn Shaw. Macario started as the USWNT's No. 10 on Saturday, while Shaw started in a hybrid winger role on Tuesday. He struggled to find his game in the first half before coming back to life in the second half, even as he moved into the No. 10 role. That reiterated a trend: Shaw is clearly best suited for the No. 10 role, but ditto. can be said for several equally talented players.
Defensively, Hayes received further confirmation on Tuesday that Jenna Nighswonger is the real option as a left-footed full-back who can press high up the forward line. Nighswonger assisted on the USWNT's first goal, scored by Crystal Dunn, who started at forward for the team for the first time in nearly seven years. Nighswonger was magnetic on the ball on Tuesday and was one of only two players, along with Horan, to start in both games against South Korea.
He played alongside left centre-back Sam Staab, who earned his first international start. Staab's consistent play in the National Women's Soccer League long seemed to justify a call-up, but that didn't come until the most recent camp. She stepped into the role seamlessly on Tuesday, nearly scoring on a set piece in the first half.
“I think it was worth it and I wouldn't have it any other way,” Staab said of the long wait for his first international cap.
Hayes has no shortage of talent to choose from. He has frequently spoken about the need to strike a balance between this rising group of young stars and the veterans who got the team to where he is now.
That includes forward Alex Morgan, who started at No. 9 on Tuesday and earned praise from Hayes for working hard despite limited touches against South Korea's low block. Morgan's turn sparked the transition play that led to Dunn's early goal.
A wave of USWNT substitutions on the hour opened the game. The connection between Rodman, Sophia Smith and Mallory Swanson was easy to see, although they all came in with fresh legs against a tired South Korean defense.
Hayes, exhausted, appeared to be losing her voice after Tuesday's game. She's been going for 10 months straight, she said, referring to how she spent the entire European season with Chelsea before joining the USWNT a few days after that job ended in May. She said she will meet with her staff Wednesday morning and then need the rest of the week to rest before heading to US Soccer headquarters in Chicago to plan the path to the Olympics.
“[The group’s] “We're not afraid to let go of the things we have to let go,” Hayes said Tuesday, amid a chorus of praise for the players. “Bold enough, brave enough to want whatever it takes to get better. I've been very impressed with them as people.”
Hayes must now choose which of those people he will invite to travel to the 2024 Olympics and press the accelerator. The Olympic Games begin next month.
