Yes I agree Rapinoe was excellent in the group stages only to be overshadowed by Llyod's "performance' in the final. I won't start in on what I think of Llyod as a #10, but you can probably guess. I do believe that Llyod's (and the 2015 WC) success has put US women's soccer back 5 years at least. Now Rapinoe's politics and physical decline will likely prevent her from having any impact on the women's game in the future. Heath I really like- sometimes. However, I am not sure she's helping me in my personal quest to bring more creativity into the women's game. I think her inconsistency is mostly related to her not being quite quick enough to be more consistently successful. I may be wrong on that and if physical testing bears me wrong, then I concede. However her inconsistency opens the the door to haters to hate and conclude that there is no place for magic in soccer. All those urging their little girl's teams to "play simple", play faster, use these isolated failures to "prove" that the flashy moves aren't the "right" way to play. I believe that we need to support the efforts of creative players because sometimes their ideas don't work for many reasons including the ball came off her foot awkwardly (surface), it was technically beyond her and need to work on it, and defense reacted better than anticipated. However when it works it wins games against bunkers (Sweden) and other well organized defenses. Sometime you have to do something unimaginable by others to get through. Plus it's fun to watch.
Yes, sometimes you do have to do something unimaginable to get through. However, my problem with Heath is that she does not make the correct decisions. Too often, her tricks slow the game down and allow the defense to cover the players she should have passed to when she made room for herself thru her moves. Culturally, I could easily see little girls discouraged from being creative. Nowadays, I don't know that girls have the opportunities to play with boys the way they used to have them.
Bit of a tangent but perhaps related - I caught some of the England/North Korea U17 match on FoxSports2 yesterday (a replay). What I saw of it was pretty darn good soccer. I'm no expert at all when it comes to judging young talent but I was really encouraged by the quality of play on display and what it bodes for the not-too-distant future.
I don't think that girls have the same opportunity to play with relatively high level boys as they used to. I have to concede that often playing with boys is a clear win for the girls and at most a neutral for the boys. When, in the past, there wasn't opportunity for girls to play on girl's teams at a high level the coaches, boys, and their parents tolerated a girl on the team if she could perform at least at the median. They understood that there were not other opportunity for her and at least begrudgingly made room. Now that there are higher level girls options there are two obstacles to girls playing with boys. Obstacle 1 the clubs covets top girls onto the girl's team to make the team more successful. Obstacle 2 the boy's clubs fear repercussion from the boy parents if they allowed a girl to play primarily with boys as they see no benefit for their boy and say the girl is taking opportunity from a boy who cannot conversely play on the girl's team. They say, well there are equivalent girls team's why not play there? I know there are clubs around that will allow girls to play or at least train with top level boys, but our direct experience is that they are not universal.