LYON, France – Here, at 8pm on Tuesday, was the moment that could have been Alex Morgan. This, an Olympic semi-final, was the stage where his vast experience would have been valued. The U.S. women’s team finished scoreless in overtime in their second straight Round of 16 match. Most football coaches, fanatics of conventional wisdom, would have turned to their veteran striker off the bench.
But not .
.
She handed the keys to the offense to Sophia Smith, Trinity Rodman and Mallory Swanson, who have already done so, and repaid her new coach’s faith.
They are, finally, the first three of the future and the present. They were empowered by Hayes, who, after years of competing with Morgan and others for playing time. For most of last year, Swanson was injured; Smith was pushed to the left wing so Morgan could play centrally; she and Rodman, and in a rigid system that denied them freedom and individual expression.
Now, with Morgan out of the picture, omitted from the Olympic roster, they have been released.
Hayes, Rodman said, “wants us to prosper the way we always have. And I think that’s something that she incorporates into the way she trains: she doesn’t want to change anyone’s style. She wants everyone to be creative in her own way. And she lets this happen at the same time as she tries to put her structure and her principles, spread out there. But allowing us to play for free was extremely successful.”
The first step, however, was simply allowing them to play. Before Hayes’ long-awaited arrival in late May, the three had Never They started a game together. Swanson (née Pugh) fell to the fringes of the USWNT roster in her early 20s. When she reemerged around the same time, then-USWNT coach Vlatko Andonovski never gave the three the opportunity to team up – because he was determined to start Morgan at the traditional number 9 (perhaps as a replacement for the injured Catarina Macario). ).
So he pushed Smith to left wing — even as she tore up the National Women’s Soccer League as a center forward. He moved Swanson to the right; then . Rodman replaced her, and Lynn Williams briefly replaced a struggling Rodman in the World Cup, where the . Morgan, a USWNT legend, apparently forgot how to score.
But she was still Alex Morgan. After being left out of the squad this winter, she returned as an injury replacement and. Her skill set late in her career, as an altruistic target, was still unparalleled. She .
Hayes, however, had a different perspective.
“It was a difficult decision, especially considering Alex’s track record and track record with this team,” she said of naming the team. “I felt I wanted to go in another direction and selected other players.”
She wanted to entrust Swanson, 26, and Smith, 23, and Rodman, 22, with transforming the USWNT. She wanted to develop around speed and 1-on-1 skill, around dynamism, interchangeability and audacity. It’s her .
She has started the SSR trident in eight of her nine games in charge – all bar a B team friendly against South Korea. They have taken some time to find their bearings, but here in France they have been excellent. They’re “dynamic as hell,” Hayes said. They scored nine of the USWNT’s 11 Olympic goals.; Swanson and Smith then.
“They’re like the Big Three,” said midfielder Sam Coffey “but they’re all Michael Jordan.”
As a newly formed trio, they are in search of a nickname. “I feel like something simple is good,” Smith said. who nicknamed them “The Holy Trinity” – but that doesn’t work, because it’s her first name. Christen Press, a former USWNT star, coined “Triple Trouble,” and Smith likes it. Swanson initially seemed intrigued by this, but when told the source, she said, “So yes. If the press said so, of course.
His word to describe playing alongside Smith and Rodman, however, was even simpler: “Fun.”
Smith agreed: “I mean, it’s so fun.”
They have all played with a joy that was sorely absent last summer in New Zealand. Swanson attributed this to “the fluidity between all the players on the front line, in the midfield”, which is “super special”. It’s a change from the Andonovski era, when Morgan was always in the middle and Smith was almost always left center or on the left. Now, under Hayes, the USWNT has often constructed a 3-1-4-2, with Smith and Swanson up front, Rose Lavelle playing off them and Rodman on the right – but none of that is set in stone.
“We’re all very dynamic,” Smith said. “We all like to play a similar game. And we like to transition, but we’re also learning that we can play, we can possess the ball and we can combine.”
Smith, in particular, “just reached another level in this tournament,” as Hayes put it; and part of the reason is his positioning. “I love playing the 9. That’s what I play in Portland. That’s where I feel comfortable,” Smith said. But then he added: “With our top three, we can all play anywhere. … Mal can go in 9, I can go out, Trin can – I mean, we can all go anywhere. I think that’s what’s so special about us. And that’s what makes us so difficult to defend.”
They will certainly start once again in Saturday’s gold medal final against Brazil. They are the main reason why the USWNT looks completely different than it did 12 months ago when it exited the World Cup earlier than ever. And the most remarkable part about the turnaround is that, aside from Swanson-for-Morgan, the players who engineered it are many of the same ones who failed last summer.
“We have the talent,” Smith said. “We just needed someone to come in and believe in us and put us in the best position to be successful. And Emma is doing just that.”
“And this team is so special,” Smith also said. “We were young. And we’re just finding ways to win games. We don’t have the most experience in the world, but that doesn’t matter. Because we’re working for each other.”
