She did help Goteborg win their first championship in the Swedish league. Surprisingly she didn’t get involved in Champions League before they were knocked out.
- agree with the 2 or 3 posters who talked up pugh. but only as a late game replacement for williams instead of smith who continues to underwhelm. pugh will not press and defend all over with the speed that vlatko's system is entirely built on. - williams isn't going away until vlatko finds another forward who defends from the front like she does. name one. - sonnett seems better to me than to many posters. i like purce. but she did not have brazil’s fast, tricky left side to defend against. plus, sonnett is the multipositional player (she plays rb, lb, & cb) that they’re always looking for on a compressed olympic roster playing a compressed calendar of games. (i know purce is as well. just saying i rate sonnett a bit higher than others). maybe it’s goodbye o’hara. - rose was poor. (i expect a lot from her). lost the ball easily. several times. easy to see why she can’t start (and in fact sees the field so little) at mancity. - those who wanted to see more macario will be disappointed. she had to go back to france in order to start her quarantine so as to be available for lyon’s next cl game. https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/20...atarina-macario-returns-to-olympique-lyonnais
Hard to compare players that have different skill sets. Both are highly skilled in their own way. The increased focus on Williams is because she is good at things that traditionally coaches have not asked forwards to do. Her skills often put her in a position where the chances she gets look easy. Scoring is never easy. Penalties are a .76 xG event. How you value them comes down to what you prioritize and that is subjective. Its clear that both players skills can be a big part of winning teams whether Club,College, Pro League or International.
Agree, but what is elite level? In the right role on the right team, Sonnet can and has played well at the highest level. Im not sticking up for her, just saying she probably played harder games at UVA than some of her NT caps. The WNT play several games where they are prohibitive favorites. they play a few games every 4 years where the odds are more balanced. That makes evaluating ANY of these players so much more subjective and difficult.
Pugh has 60+ caps. I would rather give the camp time to someone else until she shows she can perform and stay healthy in a league. She has had ample opportunity and shows how hard it is to evaluate players when you are doing it mostly on potential without game data from balanced games. This is one of the biggest issues with our ID system. College is still the #1 source of pros and the quality of competition is so variable.
Very unfortunate that Cook was not released by her club. I think Andonovski is quite high on her and she has a lot of upside. She has a shot at making the Olympic roster, but would have been helped a lot by a good showing this tournament, especially with some of the critique of defender options I am seeing here.
Re Emily Sonnett and Sophia Smith, something to think about: In January 2020, the Thorns traded Sonnett to Orlando (plus the rights to Caitlin Foord and a couple of draft picks) for the rights to the first pick in the 2020 NWSL college draft. With that pick, they took Smith. A lot more goes into a trade like that than appears on the surface -- such as succession planning, other acquisitions in the works (the Thorns aquiring Becky Sauerbruun and Natalia Kuikka), and other factors. Nevertheless ....
While I do not disagree, both could be the future of this team. Go back and look at Rose Lavelle's first cap. You at least witnessed flashes of what she was to become. Smith looked like a deer in headlights. Time will tell, and they will get their caps.
Does anyone knows what's happened to @jackdoggy and @Semblance17 ? They were regular USWNT posters who have not surfaced in weeks. I was expecting them to be posting in these threads during the SBC. I hope they're both well and healthy and just enjoying the matches LIVE in Florida.
I appreciate your concern. Thank you for the well wishes. I would explain my hiatus but Your turn, @jackdoggy
True. The top 50 American players are probably in the top 75 world wide. When talking about starting or making a roster for the USWNT, we are mostly talking internally. Almost every other NT would love to have Sonnet. However, is she better than the options or is there room on a 23 woman roster because 1-18 are just so good it doesn't matter who 19 and 20 are? But if O'Hara is increasingly unavailable, we are now looking for someone in the starting 11. We also see that it takes players a bit of time to bed in with this team. Rarely do they look great off the bat. Sometimes the first game is great, but then games 2-7 are bleh. Sonnet looks like she does with many games and two World Cups. You can get complacent with these things (see the USMNT in 2018); but maybe if Purce or someone else is given a run they will surpass Sonnet. Short has also played a lot and is one Ellis and Vladko don't seem interested in. But there is a whole domestic league of RBs, someone might be good. I'd revisit the Huerta at RB experiment too. But we are nit picking among the elite, you are correct about that.
@zdravstvuyte, this morning I thought about you because of your avatar. I would like to make the story short, but it actually needs some introduction: I am not sure if you can remember (probably not) that I am an high-school teacher in Italy. These days we alternate distance learning and proximate learning, so teachers have anyway to go to school because, everyday, they have a combination of proximate learning and distance learning through the day. Well, today, during a break, I was hanging out in an empty classroom that I don't normally use and that I was just going to use later to connect with one of my classes. Just out of curiosity, I started to read at the graffiti students had etched on the walls of the classroom (I suppose every classroom of every school in the world has them) and, at one point, at the farthest corner of the classroom, next to a last-row desk, I found, much to my surprise, a "Tobin Heath", with a heart replacing the dot of the "i". I said "much to my surprise" because women's soccer (football, here in Europe) is quite unpopular here in Italy and anyway, if you can occasionally meet someone knowing at least the names of Italy's NT players, it's absolutely unusual that anyone actually knows the international stars from overseas, despite the fact that USWNT are world champions. So, I have to say that it was unexpected, but I also have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. I am not sure if that Heath's writing was mostly due to her skills or to her looks, because I have no idea of which student had carved that (it could even be from some years ago, maybe from WWC 2019 times, as long as I know), but I'll somehow try to investigate: it would be interesting to know that there is someone else but me, at my school, following women's soccer.
Just playing; getting caps. Obviously, not 5 minute cameos, but chunks and 10 caps. The team plays so many meaningless games, there is time. Of course, this is complicated by the fact the CBA mandates certain rosters and players and the woman rely on the win bonus in all their games to make a living. An example is Sam Mewis. She got a single cap and camp in 2014. Then got some caps in the second half of 2015. Got one start in the 2016 SheBelieves and some more caps that year. It is not until 2017 that she is actually a mostly starter. It takes awhile to get into this team. The level is just so much higher than anything else.
Since she can't score, I would Crystal Dunn her, we need a backup right fullback. Although, there might not be enough time before the Olympics. Might definitely be a thought for World Cup prep when we have 2 years.
Not that I don’t disagree with you but it’s amazing the disrespect we got from the rest of the world as even FIFA’s officially 2020 top 10 didn’t even got a single American as well as the more detailed Guardian top 100 listed(12 Americans listed but not in the top 10) even though I would make Julie Ertz top 5/Sam Mewis top 10, but guess they’ll keep disrespecting us, we keep winning the WC Still, that we don’t give enough chances to newbies to make the USWNT(which is the just about the only way to make an 6 figure salary) means we’ll keep loosing a lot of talent as for example, I believe Janine Hinkle(praised enough as the best FB in the world) decided to retire
I would normally be at the games in Florida. I go to every She Believes Tourney. I'm not going anywhere until I'm vaccinated. Maybe same with them.
Smith looked nervous and unsure. But that’s fixable. Williams wasn’t threatening. That’s harder to fix. Sonnet was fine. That was a big test and she passed. Sure Dunn was better. But Sonnet was solid and expecting to just boss Brazil is asking too much.
Actually her "problems" are pretty easy to fix. 1. She misses goal too often - She needs to slow down in practice to the point she is 100% and the practice at small speed increases until she is 100% at each speed until she can execute 100% without pressure at each speed and then when she is 100% at full speed slow back down a bit and add light pressure and so on until she is close to 100% at full speed under moderate pressure. 2. She slows down when presented with choices or the need to pass or shoot. - See #1 it is almost the same. 3. She makes the wrong choice too often. - Once you fix 1 and 2 this, probably goes away. 4. She gets tired in matches. - Fix by simple conditioning and insist on correct rest vs workout ratios. Those are really her main problems and they're easy to fix, just not quickly. In fact her lack of top notch conditioning did not show much until the 2nd match and that just seems to be a lack of games in the recent past.
Interesting comment. I have met Nike reps from Venezuela and youth girl soccer parents from Sweden and England (and maybe more that I cannot remember specifically) who have said something similar about women’s soccer in their countries. England was quite a while ago and I have the impression that has changed quite a bit although I wonder how much really.