USWNT v Netherlands, Sept 18, pre/pbp/post

The match against the Netherlands is at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta and kicks off at 7 pm ET. It will be televised on Fox Sports 1.

There is a public training at 6 pm ET on Sept 17 (today), which I'm headed to. I'll be back with a report.

 

I was going to mention that O'Hara wasn't there although at the time I didn't know why.

Training Overview:
Warm-up: 10 minutes of passing, stretching, doing their own thing. About 5 minutes early (before 6), they started a dynamic movement warmup. After about 10 minutes, they went into passing and volleys in groups of 4. If you've seen the 2-training-1 pattern in soccer drills, this was similar but was 3-training-1 and then they switched. I didn't watch the goalkeeper warm-ups as much, but did notice that there was a camera on the goalkeeper warmup. Then they finished the warm-up in groups of 4 doing short-short-long passing. Dawn Scott ran all of the warm-up.

Then the whole team gathered in the middle of the field, and Gustavsson talked a bit about tactics with some cones before they split up into a half-field scrimmage (looked like mostly shadow defending). The team that looked like the possible starting lineup was Engen (playing right back), Sauerbrunn, JJ, Kling (who played really far up into the midfield so that it looked like a 3 back); Brian, Long, Horan; Lloyd, Morgan, and Heath (Heath as RM and Lloyd and Morgan playing close together). Actually it almost looked like a 3-5-2 at times with Lloyd and Morgan up top and Kling playing in the midfield. The other team was Rapinoe, Dunn, Mewis, Krieger, Sonnett, Harris (playing as a field player) plus staff to fill out the team. Naeher was in goal.

Then the team gathered again to switch some pinnies, and the lineup (with the possible subs for tomorrow?) switched to Krieger, JJ, Sonnett, Kling (again playing far up); Sauerbrunn (playing dmid), Mewis, Rapinoe; Dunn, Lloyd, and Press.

Then they played 4v4 on small fields with full-size goals. The teams were Lloyd, Sauerbrunn, Heath, and Klingenberg versus JJ, Morgan, Horan and Brian. The other set of 4v4 was Sonnett, Long, Mewis, and Dunn versus Rapinoe, Press, Krieger, and Engen.

After 2 rounds of 2-3 minute 4v4, they split up to practice corner kicks and free kicks on one end and crossing/shooting on the other. Brian took all the corner kicks and free kicks, and it was Morgan, Lloyd, JJ, Long, Horan, and Engen in the 18 trying to finish them with only Gustavsson to play shadow keeper/defender. Gustavsson was mostly running the corner kick and free kick practice, and at the end had a pretty animated conversation with Brian in which he looked to be showing her where he wanted her to be serving the ball.

Dunn went off early and was sitting on the bench while crossing and corner practice was happening. She also left when the rest of the players started signing at the end of practice. She looked to be moving okay, but she could possibly be nursing a slight injury.

After crosses/corners, Lloyd practiced some penalties (Long also took one). While Lloyd was taking pk's, the rest of the team had some free time to practice whatever (Most went to the other end to join the shooting/crossing practice.). In that free time, Long, Horan, and Brian looked to be practicing passes, switching the field, and movement off the ball in the middle of the field.

After about an hour of practice, the team started their cool-down. Almost all of the players signed at the end, except for Rapinoe and Heath (I'm not sure about Heath, but I think that's who was sitting next to Rapinoe while everyone else was signing). Horan also did some extra stretching and looked to be getting some treatment while everyone else was signing, but Horan did come over and sign after that. Sauerbrunn was also the only player I noticed who came back to sign a few extra after the staff had already called everyone else to go back towards the locker room.

 

I also wondered why no one else practiced pk's, but thought it could have been because it was public training. Also Lloyd was taking pk's on an empty net, so it wasn't the best situation for real pk practice. Harris was on the other end in the crossing/shooting practice, and Naeher was at the center of the field discussing something with the goalkeeper coach while Lloyd was taking her pk's.

I had the same question though about why no one else took a free kick or corner kick. I thought Heath would have taken a couple of them.

 

No photographic memory...I took some notes. I'm pretty sure the people sitting in front of me thought I was part of the Dutch federation.