USWNT likely heading for coaching change — and here’s who it needs to consider
Let’s take as a given that Vlatko Andonovski will not be coaching the U.S. Women’s National Team at next summer’s Paris Olympics.
That is not official yet, but after the team’s spectacularly disappointing showing at the Women’s World Cup ended Sunday morning in the Round of 16, it might as well be. Andonovski is 0-for-2 in major tournaments — holding the unceremonious title of being the only bench boss in program history to coach multiple major tournaments and win none of them — and his contract expires at the end of the year, according to reports. That is not a survivable situation.
The job of finding his replacement, as well as conducting a thorough review of what went wrong in Australia and New Zealand, falls on Matt Crocker, the U.S. Soccer Federation’s newly hired sporting director, who must pilot the USSF into doing something it has very regularly failed to do: Getting it right.
The federation’s list of failures across the men’s and women’s sides is too long to put here, but as relates to the women’s team in this World Cup alone, it starts with hiring Andonovski. Allowing team selection to be so heavily influenced by playing domestically that players turned down chances to go to Europe — Lindsey Horan was the only member of this team to play club soccer outside the NWSL — and letting a youth pipeline that was once the best in the world suffer major setbacks would also rank high on the list.
Crocker, who was hired in April and has only made one major decision on the job so far (bringing back Gregg Berhalter to coach the men’s team), doesn’t have to wear any of that. But this hire is his — all his — and he has to nail it.
Even in a World Cup for which the USWNT suffered a series of pre-tournament injuries and brought a roster with very few players in their prime, the margins here were small enough that they could have won the World Cup — or at minimum avoided such an early exit — with a better coach.
Andonovski’s failure to change tactics until the Sweden game coupled with the instant comfort the U.S. seemed to feel once he did was damning. If he’d adapted sooner, the U.S. could have won its group, avoided playing Sweden altogether and instead faced an overachieving South Africa squad in the Round of 16.
Even in the Sweden game, Andonovski continued a baffling pattern of substitutions, making just one over the first 90 minutes as the Swedes started to get a foothold. In extra time, he brought on three subs — two of them (Megan Rapinoe and Kelley O’Hara) went on to miss penalties.
Rapinoe, who is near-perfect from the spot throughout her career, gets a pass there. But Andonovski’s continued faith in her as an impact sub throughout the tournament goes down as a bad misread. Ditto for sticking with Alex Morgan, who was the biggest culprit of the teamwide failure to finish chances.
In a landscape where the U.S. is no longer one of few countries making a serious investment in women’s soccer and where its domestic league is no longer the highest level of club competition in the sport — again, the national team needs more players in Europe, playing in the Women’s Champions League — entire tournaments can hinge on those decisions.
Crocker’s list for Andonovski’s replacement should have three names at the top: England coach Sarina Wiegman, Chelsea coach Emma Hayes and OL Reign coach Laura Harvey.
Wiegman, widely considered the best coach in the sport, might not be gettable. England, after all, won the European title last summer, is guaranteed a better World Cup finish than the U.S. and could end up winning the whole thing. It’s not clear that the USWNT would be a step up for her.
Hayes, though, has built Chelsea’s women’s club into one of the best in Europe over 11 years there, and worked in the U.S. prior to that job. Harvey has worked for the national team before at the U-20 and senior levels, holds the NWSL record for most wins and coaches Rapinoe, Rose Lavelle, Emily Sonnett, Sofia Huerta and Alana Cook at the club level.
“The U.S. women’s national team is probably the top job in the world, if not a top-three job in the world,” Harvey told reporters Sunday. “That’s just reality and if my name is anywhere near it, then that’s an honor. But first and foremost, my priority is the Reign.”
The process that ended in Berhalter’s rehiring was advertised as deep and detailed, with the last step being a 10-hour interview that included psychometric and abstract reasoning tests. That’s what the expectation will be here.
The Olympics kick off in 352 days. Finding the right coach is the first step to avoiding the same embarrassment that befell the USWNT in the World Cup.
