New USWNT coach Emma Hayes searching for connection, scoring as team prepare to open Paris Olympics

The last time the United States women’s national team transported its brand of soccer to France, the issue became that they scored too many goals . No, really, that was a thing. It appears that’ll be the last problem they’ll encounter as the 2019 World Cup champions venture to the French Riviera to open the 2024 Olympic Games.

Instead of being ripped by many observers for not playing nice with Thailand in an opening 13-0 victory back then, the USWNT will be playing in Nice against Zambia at 2:30 ET Thursday afternoon and hoping to find some way to put the ball into the goal.

They played 180 minutes against non-Olympic opponents in Stateside exhibitions this month and scored only once. They won 1-0 against Mexico, ranked No. 29 in the world, and drew 0-0 against No. 44 Costa Rica. And curiously, new coach Emma Hayes chose not to start 2024 goals leader Jaedyn Shaw in either game, granting her a combined 38 minutes off the bench.

Hayes deployed a three-player forward line of Sophia Smith, Mal Swanson and Trinity Rodman. That meant operating without a defined striker, the position in which Shaw has scored 7 times in 16 national team appearances, including a team-best 5 goals this calendar year. The USWNT generated myriad chances against Costa Rica, in particular; they produced an expected goals number of 2.7. Obviously, what was expected was not delivered.

“I think when you’re putting a team together, you have to build connections,” Hayes told The Sporting News. “You can’t just keep changing players all of the time. My philosophy is that the very best teams learn to play together first.

“Ideally, I’d have had a lot longer with the group, but that’s not the case. So the first instance is get a consistent group playing together so they can build those connections, build those relationships. And, with time, more opportunities will come.”

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When did Emma Hayes start coaching U.S. women?

Hayes was selected to become the new USWNT coach last November. It was agreed she would complete her season as coach of the women’s team at Chelsea FC in London, which won England’s Women’s Super League for the fifth consecutive year in 2023-24. But Chelsea did not play its final regular season game until May 18, and the title race went down to the final day, with Hayes’ team earning a 6-0 victory over Manchester United to assure a superior goal differential to Manchester City.

So Hayes’ approach, given time, obviously can generate offense. She did not coach her first USWNT game until June 1, though, and less than two months later comes one of the most important competitions in women’s soccer.

The United States has won the Olympic women’s soccer gold medal four times, starting with the initial competition in 1996. They struggled to score in Tokyo, however, getting shut out three times in five games before settling for a bronze medal. At the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, it was the same problem: two shutouts and only four goals in four games before a round of 16 shootout loss to Sweden.

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Shaw’s emergence since her first cap last October, and the exclusion of veteran Alex Morgan from the Olympic roster, suggested there might be a new striker in town for the USWNT. Instead, there’s been none.

Natural wingers Smith and Swanson have been prolific scorers for the USWNT when healthy and in form. Smith, 23, scored 11 times in 17 appearances in 2022 and was named U.S. Soccer’s women’s player of the year. Swanson scored 7 goals in just six games before a knee injury cost her the opportunity to play at the World Cup.

Rodman suggested real potential at age 19 with her performance in winning the 2021 NWSL title with the Washington Spirit. But she has produced only 7 goals in 40 national team games since 2022 and has made narrowly missing promising chances a hard habit to break.

All this might have been different had Catarina Macario not found herself injured again, and unable to continue toward the Olympics, after being selected to the squad. She had ACL surgery in 2022 and has not competed in a major tournament since for the USWNT. She might have been at the center of the attack if available.

They'll have to find a source of scoring in her absence, again, but Smith is confidence in the USWNT attack.

“That’s not something we’re worried about or concerned about,” Smith told The Sporting News. “We know how to score goals. The final piece just needs to come together, and we’ve been working a lot this week on that. I’m not worried about that at all.”

Are Olympics a chance to erase World Cup failure?

The World Cup performance last summer in Oceania that led to the dismissal of head coach Vlatko Andonovski marked the first time in USWNT history they failed to reach the semifinals. The head coaching position is not all that’s changed since.

Such players as left back Jenna Nighswonger and midfielder Korbin Albert have become regulars in the lineup. Veteran Crystal Dunn, who played left back for the 2019 World Cup champions as a way to get all the team’s best players on the field, has gotten more opportunities as a winger or forward, where she has played (and played well) for her club teams. Sam Coffey has taken over the defensive midfield role from the overmatched Andi Sullivan.

A lot still is the same, though. Lindsey Horan must channel her obvious talent more influentially, more often. There needs to be someone to make some use of attacking midfielder Rose Lavelle’s inventive passing.

“For someone like Jaedyn, she will get plenty of opportunities in this tournament,” Hayes told TSN. “But at this moment in time, the decisions up until this point was to go with the group they had in the starting 11.”

Hayes rejected the idea that this Olympic experience can serve to put the 2023 World Cup crash into the past. It’s already there for her. She is focused on the future.

And while she left no doubt the focus will be on winning this tournament as long as the USWNT is involved – she was emphatic about focusing only on the first game in group play – there is the sense this is a first step toward the 2027 Women’s World Cup.

“We’ve moved on from last summer. It’s not something we bring back into this environment right now,” Smith said. “It’s a completely new environment, new opportunity, a lot of new players, and we just look forward at this point.

“With Emma coming in, we’ve learned a lot, we’ve grown a lot and introduced a lot of new things that I think will help us have success in this tournament. But we’re just looking toward this tournament and not backwards because there’s really no point in doing that.”