USWNT Year in Review: Emma Hayes Leads USA to Gold, But Loses Several Star Players

It’s been an epic year for the United States women’s national team.

They were champions of the Concacaf Gold Cup W, champions of the SheBelieves Cup and Olympic champions. Emma Hayes took over as new manager and made an immediate and powerful impact. The “Triple Espresso” emerged and the legends retired. Alex Morgan, Alyssa Naeher and Kelley O’Hara, who have been mainstays of the show for more than a decade, announced the end of their respective careers. And with those departures, younger, less experienced players have earned opportunities to fill their spots.

Just over a year ago, the USWNT appeared to be in a state of turmoil following a disastrously early exit from the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. When US Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker began the search process for a new head coach, he used the term “serial winner” to describe his ideal candidate. That’s exactly what he has in Hayes, who was hired last November but didn’t fully take over the team until last May. Since then, the USWNT has gone 13-0-2 and won Olympic gold. They have also returned to the top of the FIFA world rankings, after losing several places after the World Cup.

After the Olympics, Emily Sonnett joked with Hayes that he started his tenure in the United States too strongly. That’s a fair statement given everything the team accomplished this calendar year, but the players are keeping it in perspective and believe it’s really just the beginning of something as the next cycle begins.

“I think we’ve made great strides in such a short time,” Rose Lavelle said earlier this year. “So I’m excited to see how we take advantage of this. I think the times ahead will be fun.”

With that said, here’s what 2024 was like for the USWNT and what’s to come in 2025 and beyond:

Emma Hayes takes charge

Hayes officially took charge of the USWNT two months before the Olympics. Her first training camp consisted of getting to know the players, building relationships and applying her principles. He compared his role at the time to that of a “cardiac surgeon in the middle of emergency surgery.” Not because the team was in crisis per se, but because it was difficult to teach concepts and perform “surgery” simultaneously with such limited time before the Games began.

After six months on the job, he no longer feels that way.

“I’m in the wards, I’m in the clinics,” Hayes joked recently. “The best way to say it is: it’s working, it’s high level. I think everyone understands the spirit. I think it will be even clearer once we deliver the [USWNT] strategy in January. I think that’s when we can go to another level and each and every department can really grow in their roles with even more clarity about what our goals are for the WNT.

“But it’s a lovely hospital. The people are really good and the patients are behaving really well, so overall it’s a good start.”

United States wins Olympic gold

The USWNT won gold at the Olympics for the first time since 2012 when they beat Brazil 1-0 thanks to a tremendous goal from Mallory Swanson and some massive saves from Naeher.

The final was only Hayes’ tenth game in charge, but he was able to rally the team and quickly implement his style and tactics. He made tough decisions, like leaving Morgan off the 18-player roster. He also ignored critics who thought he should make more changes to his starting lineups throughout the tournament.

Paris was also where “Triple Espresso” was born. The USWNT’s dynamic forward trio of Swanson, Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman combined to score 10 of 12 total goals for the USA, and each scored a game-winning goal in the knockout stage. They also combined for five assists, showing what the future of the US offense will look like under Hayes. The three players were also nominated for the Women’s Ballon d’Or.

The defense, led by Naomi Girma, was stalwart throughout the Games, while Naeher etched her iconic status even further into the USWNT history books. She became the first goalkeeper in the history of women’s football to keep a clean sheet in both the World Cup final (2019) and the Olympic final (2024). He also made several amazing saves, such as when the tip of his shoe saved the tying goal in extra time of the semi-final, and this one in the final moments of the final.

Superstars retire

Morgan shocked the world in September when she posted a video on social media announcing her immediate retirement and that she was pregnant with her second child.

While Morgan’s decision to hang up his boots wasn’t a total surprise, it happened quickly. The 35-year-old forward made her announcement on a Thursday and played her final game with the San Diego Wave the following Sunday. It was an emotional moment, but Morgan expressed clarity in his decision. Without a doubt, she will go down as one of the best players of all time.

Almost three months later, Naeher retired from international football. The 36-year-old goalkeeper, whom Hayes considers “the best goalkeeper this country has ever had,” played her last game on December 3 in a 2-1 victory over the Netherlands. In true Naeher style, their final game included many heroic saves: the Dutch took 22 shots to the Americans’ five.

Naeher’s retirement presents a challenge for Hayes, as there is currently a clear second goalie. It was initially thought to be Casey Murphy, who backed up Naeher at the Olympics and has 20 caps, but was not on the most recent list. Murphy could still be the front-runner; perhaps Hayes simply wanted to see some new faces in this field because he already knows what Murphy can do and called up Mandy Haught and Phallon Tullis-Joyce instead. Still, there will be a lot of competition over the next two years.

“There’s a huge void, but there’s also a huge opportunity for anyone who is within that group,” Hayes said. “I think we’ll probably have to go through a period of determining who’s going to be number one, probably over the course of next year. I’ll have to give the players experiences because they don’t have them.”

Expanding the pool of players

One of the things Hayes said when she first came onto the team was that she was “pleasantly surprised” with the depth of the group of players. Now that she is more settled in her job, Hayes wants to expand it by giving more opportunities to younger, less experienced players.

That’s exactly what she’s been doing these past few months: 11 players have played their first international matches since she took over. And that development will be vitally important as the team looks forward to the 2027 World Cup.

Hayes spoke on the topic after the USWNT’s final two games of the year against England and the Netherlands:

“The moment you start cutting and changing equipment, the harder it is to achieve what you want,” Hayes said. “But I want to see the players. I don’t want to sit there and just say, ‘Well, I’m going to put all my experienced players in, develop the connections and the combinations for that now.’

“[If I do that] I can’t see an Ally Sentnor or a Hal Hershfelt or an Alyssa Thompson or a Yazmeen Ryan, etc. I want to see where they really are at this level so I know once we get into the New Year and into SheBelieves, what our core group will be going forward. “And I owe it to the whole playing group to look at everyone.”

All eyes on 2027

After a much-needed break over the holidays, the USWNT will reconvene in January for a “Futures Camp,” designed to identify promising talent, to be held simultaneously with the senior team camp in Los Angeles. That will also be the time when Hayes and his staff present their 2027-28 strategy.

Everything this team does in the future will be with an eye toward winning the next World Cup, which will be held in Brazil in 2027. Hayes will continue to develop the player pool and expose the youth to the USWNT environment, which will create more competition. He also plans to synchronize things with the U-20 and U-23 programs so that when those players finally transition to the senior team, the jump won’t be as daunting.

Hayes’ introduction to the team had to be accelerated: she completed her season with Chelsea, jumped straight into the USWNT camp, and by then the Olympics were eight weeks away. Now that a chaotic, albeit successful, 2024 is coming to an end, the team has time to reorient itself and get into a rhythm before the next big tournament in 2027.

“It’s going to be [two] These are very important years to continue to build and put ourselves in the best position to be successful in the World Cup,” Smith said in October. “I think it’s about setting small goals, building as a team.

“And Emma, ​​I mean, we won a gold with her, but it’s still very new. We haven’t had much time yet. So we’ll keep working on it and developing until we become a team that can compete to win a World Cup.” Cup.”

Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. She previously wrote for Sports Illustrated, USA Today and The Indianapolis Star. She is the author of “Strong Like a Woman,” published in spring 2022 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Title IX. follow her on @LakenLitman.