Questions loom as USA women take victory lap with Costa Rica friendly
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Version 0 of 1. After winning the World Cup and lifting the trophy as world champions, how soon is too soon for major roster changes? Perhaps the question for coach Jill Ellis is more specific: will she know if she was too slow to make changes before it’s too late? Being at the top, for all its glory, is hardly an easy position for Ellis, who was handed a multi-year contract extension after leading the US women’s national team to the world title last month. Now she has to keep the team on top amid an ever-changing current of factors. Thusly, while the only logical time for a World Cup victory tour is now, fresh off the team’s big win, the timing may also mean the victory tour takes on the form a player trial period and preparation for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. “In my mind, it’s a certainly a celebration of the summer, but with such a short turnaround to Olympic qualifiers, this also has to be an evaluation period,” Ellis said this week. “Even in a World Cup, a coach is evaluating. We’ll give a lot of players a lot of time. With good opponents coming in, I want to use this opportunity to assess for the future.” The victory tour kicks off Sunday in Pittsburgh against Costa Rica for what will be largest-ever crowd for a US women’s standalone friendly, with more than 40,000 expected to attend. Nine more games will follow in the coming months, including friendlies against Australia and Brazil, to carry the team to the Concacaf Olympic qualifying tournament from 10 to 21 February. What’s less clear is, between now and Rio, how many new players will Ellis give the chance to break into the USA squad? Two players from the World Cup’s 23-player roster are retiring, with more potentially on the way. (The USA was the oldest team at the World Cup, with an average age of 29.5.) But a parade of tryouts for young players is unlikely. Ellis has made it clear she doesn’t view the senior national team as the place to develop young players. Rather, she expects the youth national teams, college system and the National Women’s Soccer League to bring players up to senior national team readiness. “Players that come into this program, they can’t just grow in the program. They have to thrive and belong in the program,” Ellis said, using 23-year-old Julie Johnston as an example of a player who broke into the line-up because she was ready. “[Johnston] is a player that merited being in there because she was ready to step in. That’s the balance of vetting younger players.” The roster for Rio, at just 18 players, offers five less slots than the World Cup. Lauren Holiday and Shannon Boxx have announced their retirements while Alyssa Naeher was included in the World Cup roster because of goalkeeper requirements and is unlikely to make the Rio team. For now, that leaves two more cuts even if Ellis decides to bring in no new players. But the smaller roster size is notable in another way. During the World Cup, there were some players that played very little or not at all – a luxury that is less likely with fewer players on the bench. Ellis may want to maximize her roster, which means that perhaps some players need to be replaced with so-called utility players who can fill several roles or younger players who can recover more quickly. At the same time, Ellis has shown she likes to settle on a core group and stick to it. She was asked on a conference call with reporters if she’d be bringing in players other than those that featured in Canada for the victory tour and US Soccer president Sunil Gulati interrupted to note that Ellis has no directive from the federation. “The national team coach can bring in whoever she would like for any games we have,” he said. “She can bring in World Cup players or non-World Cup players or college players that are available or anyone else. That’s the case of all our teams and that’s certainly the case for the games this fall.” The message is one of confidence from US Soccer to give Ellis the freedom to do what she wants after a somewhat strange road through the World Cup. The US women had a slow start wherein they never lost a game, but also looked to be struggling early. Gulati told the Guardian that many doubted the team, sending letters of concern his way. And yet, the Americans won it all and finished with a jaw-dropping final performance that saw them ahead 4-0 over Japan in the first 16 minutes. For now, Ellis is sticking to the exact 23-player roster that went to Canada to kick off the tour. Alex Morgan is recovered from a recent surgery and is no longer listed as out, but may not be ready to play. Sydney Leroux is still recovering from surgery but will still join the team. Carli Lloyd, the overnight star from a dazzling performance in the World Cup, said she expects the tour to turn into a more serious evaluation period as it stretches on. “Now we know that Jill is going to be sticking around for a while so when we meet up in Pittsburgh I think she’ll give us an outline for what’s to come for the rest of the year,” Lloyd said recently. “It is a celebration tour, but at the same, come February we do have those Olympic qualifying games. I would imagine (the later games) will be pretty important.” There are plenty of factors for Ellis to consider as Rio inches closer, but Ellis hinted that her new, longer contract gives her more leeway to think about the future. When she was hired last year, Gulati declared her job description had only one metric: win the World Cup. Now that she’s done that, she can start building for cycles beyond – if she wants to, that is. “Nothing is set in my mind,” Ellis said of her Olympic roster. “It’s again beginning another process, but I feel very good about the assessment I’ve just been able to have with the 23 players we had this summer.” |