Never heard of Cook before but read her resume in this thread Alana Cook will start at center back alongside Becky Sauerbrunn tonight in what will be her first international appearance for the USA at the senior level. Cook went directly to Europe after an excellent career at Stanford and currently plays with Paris Saint-Germain in France. She was the Pac-12 Defender of the Year in 2012. She has played with the USA at the U-17, U-20 and U-23 levels and played with the U.S. U-23 WNT earlier this year. She has five career U-23 caps. How the Hell has this woman never been given a shot at the Sr team with a resume like that?
Cook was also recently in camp with England. She's a dual national. The WNT doesn't usually try to cap duals early to snag them but have often left it up to the player to decide. This game still doesn't cap-tie her, btw.
We were pretty impressed with Purce, thought Sonnett played well again, and helped herself by being effective from the wrong side. Cook did some little things I appreciated. To my eyes Costa Rica is a much better team than people are giving them credit for. They could easily qualify. Keeper either had the worst day ever or needs a lot of work though
There were no really "bad" performances and several pretty good ones including both first timers. In fact I think the defense in this match was every bit as good as it was in the last match. But, because of the very different level of play and quality of the opposition, it is quite hard to judge. One player I want to comment about directly is Pugh: I felt very high on her when she emerged but then she was injured. I expected her return from injury and after a readjustment period a return to the form she showed before injury. In fact she is now playing pretty much the poorest of all the players in the midfield or forwards on the USWNT. She seems slower and her decisions seem poorer. It looks like she has added some mass and she has not adjusted her play to that increase. I also, based on what she has shown recently, question her conditioning ethic. Everything I have seen "could" be slight fear of another sever injury. She is still quite good but she just seems to fail at what she succeeded at before the injury. I have not seen her play much in the NWSL. Is she as timid in her play with her club as she is with the USWNT?
Agree on Pugh she appears to be out of form and out of shape. So much talent on the team. I thought Cook was really good, especially her passing and recovery.
I'm going to go on a limb and put out a tentative, provisional roster for the Olympics Leaving aside the goalkeepers and putting them roughly by position and in no particular order: Defenders: Dahlkemper Sauerbrunn Short Davidson (assuming she's fully recovered from injury) Sonnett Dunn * Midfielders: Ertz Horan S. Mewis Lavelle Forwards/wings: Lloyd Press Heath McDonald or Williams Rapinoe * The asterisk for Dunn is that I'm not assuming Andonovski is pigeon-holing her at LB rather than somewhere further up the pitch Conspicuously absent: Alex Morgan Morgan Brian Allie Long Mallory Pugh Ali Krieger Kelly O'Hara Andi Sullivan (who's maybe the biggest wild-card in this group) Kristen Hamilton (not as conspicuous as the others but I'll mention her because she's been special in the NWSL but hard to see where to fit her in an 18-player roster) Other key assumptions: Jaelene Hinkle, for whatever reasons, will not make it back onto the team, at least not yet Tierna Davidson will be fully recovered from injury Rapinoe will be at least close to 100% I know midfield looks to be without much backup there but a) I'm not assuming Andonovski is only going to play Dunn at LB and not somewhere further up the pitch b) I suspect Anodonovski is considering the option of playing Heath further back closer to a midfield role c) Carli Lloyd could also drop back to the midfield Nonetheless, I could see Andonovski going for one more bona-fide midfielder especially if Davidson isn't fully recovered in case he needs Ertz to drop back to central defense. That could mean selecting Long, Brian, Andi Sullivan, McCall Zerboni or someone else altogether who he rates highly in the midfield.
Pugh should have stayed at UCLA, I don't remember where she got the nasty injury but she might have avoided it and it would have given her possibly the championship in 2017 if we had her in the final against Stanford and while we are certainly totally fine without Pugh, she would have been king of the mountain on the NCAA level. Instead she went pro early on and started in the NWSL and with injuries, has remained pretty mediocre at her club the past year which has thus pushed her back on the B roster for the USWNT. This causes her confidence and general happiness to take a serious hit which hinders her progress as a starter as time goes on. There's a new manager now and every year there are young studs coming out the gates challenging Pugh and even older ones like Hamilton that are being efficient AF in the NWSL regardless of USWNT time. She's starting to fade away like Sydney Leroux did before Syd said eff it, I might as well have kids if I'm not going to be a starter.
Everyone on the endline with me seemed to know somehow when Rose got that breakaway that a goal was coming.