USA emerge as World Cup favorites as hosts France crack under pressure

Megan Rapinoe hoped that it would be “a total shitshow circus” and Friday’s quarter-final between the US and France delivered. It was the biggest match of this Women’s World Cup yet, both in the hype leading up to it and the quality on the field.

The defending champions continue to look unstoppable while the hosts will feel they missed an opportunity to win over their home nation more. Here are the key takeaways from the game.

Jill Ellis gets it right, despite her critics

It was a big decision. Lindsey Horan, long the USWNT’s preferred starting No 8, would not be starting against France. She wasn’t injured – it was a pure coaching – and Samantha Mewis would take her place.

Why?

“Just playing Sam – that was kind of it,” Ellis said. “I think Sam is in-form.”

It’s hard to quibble with Mewis’s form. She had a strong game, disrupting France’s play and serving as a reliable passing outlet, and generally did what she needed to do, other than a dive that could’ve been booked for simulation.

But Horan is arguably the best, most impactful midfielder in the world – at least when she is given the chance to find the game. For the Portland Thorns, she’s been their single most influential player with everything flowing through her, and it’s why she was named the MVP of the American domestic league, the NWSL, last year. If the US had lost many would’ve pointed to Ellis’s decision not to start Horan.

Ellis and her coaching staff also did a fine job managing the game, making necessary adjustments to keep France from working their way into the game, including dropping from a 4-3-3 to a more defensive 5-4-1 shape.

“The coaching staff thought the momentum was shifting in France’s favor, so they wanted to make it more difficult for France,” Becky Sauerbrunn said. “Adding more people in the backline allowed us to spread out a bit more and take away even more of their flank space.”

Although the US has tested it out several times before in the middle of friendlies, it still took French coach Corinne Diacre by surprise, she admitted.

Mark that down as a win for Ellis.

Alyssa Naeher acquits herself well enough

It was perhaps the biggest storyline before this World Cup began, and it wouldn’t go away through the USWNT’s first four games: the US had a goalkeeper problem. It wasn’t just that Alyssa Naeher can’t match up to her predecessor, Hope Solo, who was a generational talent in net. It was that Naeher kept making worrying mistakes.

Against Chile, she wildly misjudged an effort to rush an attacker and let in a goal that was, luckily for her, waved offside. Against Spain, it was another mistake – a miscommunication in passing the ball to defender Sauerbrunn, who was under pressure, that allowed Spain to score an equalizer.

But against France, easily the best attacking team the US has faced yet, Naeher stepped up in the big moments, making four saves on the day and looking steady when cutting out crosses or coming off her line.

There was a nervy moment from Naeher in the 58th minute – she came out and misjudged a cross, giving Eugenie Le Sommer an open chance on goal, that went wide. But to Naeher’s credit, she didn’t let the moment rattle her and continued to be a decisive presence in net for the remainder of the game.

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France falter again, but it’s the burden of being host

After Friday’s quarter-final, both sides agreed that France were, in many ways, the better side.

“It’s no secret we have to get better on the ball,” Megan Rapinoe said. “Playing better with it, better offensively, better in our possession and our passing – they were clearly much better than us in that tonight.”

France doubled the US in attempts, 20 to 10, and they controlled the possession, 60% to 40%. But the US still found a way to win.

“I don’t think we’ve ever dominated the US that much,” captain Amandine Henry said afterward. “But still, dominating them still isn’t the same as winning.”

There is a narrative about this French team that they haven’t managed to shake: they crumble under the pressure, and there’s a reason they’ve never done better than fourth place in a World Cup.

Henry denied the pressure of being host got to the French but every single team hosting the Women’s World Cup has been knocked out in the quarter-final round – except for the United States in 1999.

The pressure looked far more comfortable for the US than it did for France. As Ellis said before the match: “Other teams visit pressure, but we live there.”

The loss means that France are now only not out of the World Cup, but they have also failed to capture one of the European slots for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Asked whether France’s finish was a failure, Diacre did not try to defend their performance.

“It is a failure,” Diacre said. “I don’t think we should shy away from that. We didn’t win, we didn’t qualify [for the Olympics], so from a sporting perspective, it really can’t be anything other than a failure.”

A warning to the field: The US can’t score first

The Americans have scored first in every match of this World Cup – and not just first, but quickly. The USA’s opening goals have happened, so far, in the 12th, 11th, third, seventh and fifth minutes.

The US have never lost when scoring first in a World Cup, now through 39 matches. France, meanwhile, has lost every time they conceded first in a World Cup.

That’s not a coincidence. The American game plan is clearly to score as early as possible, taking an ultra-attacking posture in the opening minutes of a match. That could be the time for opponents to capitalize, but instead they have only tended to look overwhelmed by the USA’s aggression.

In France case, Rapinoe’s fifth-minute goal changed the game and forced the hosts to try to chase the Amerians, a position they didn’t want to be in.

“We had obviously analyzed the statistics, which said the US tend to come out firing in the opening 15 minutes, and we paid very dearly for switching off there,” Diacre said.