It would do everyone good to remember that the She Believes Cup is only a series of friendlies and as such they should be used for experimentation more that an actual attempt to win any one match by putting the currently best lineup on the field. I expect to see bubble players get a lot of time and maybe even start in place of established players. The Olympics are still a log ways off and there will be a good number of friendlies after the She Believes Cup to finalize the roster. This is the time to try to find the players that may have been missed earlier or who simply did not show well in the earlier practices and so missed qualification. I would say that 12 of the 16 field players are pretty much locked in but there are four positions that are in contention and those are what these friendlies should help to determine. I think there are about 8 or 9 players in real contention for those last few slots. And of course there is the "Morgan" factor to consider. Will she or won't she be back at her full abilities before the final roster has to be set and will whatever level she is at at that time be good enough to knock someone of the roster. It is for the team, the coach and the fans a case of living in "interesting" times. In every sense of the word.
It seems like VA is much more willing to rotate his lineup than Jill was, which is refreshing. Well, rotate everyone other than Crystal "superwoman" dunn... they definitely need reinforcements at that position.
So, should we likewise expect to see four players on the Olympics roster who weren't on the World Cup roster? As was the case for the 2016 Olympics?
I believe that there is a pretty good reason or set of reasons why Dunn never got subbed: 1. She is almost certain to play left back, barring injury, throughout the Olympics and her inclusion is without doubt. 2. She was, in my opinion, the best left back at the WWC and, without too much of a stretch, the best defender. 3. She is still learning the position, which should terrify any player that has desires to attack down our left. 4. She currently uses speed to cover for any mistakes but there are players that are about as fast as she is and she needs to learn to minimize her mistakes. 5. There was a lot, outside of left back, that needed to be looked at and the coach felt that looking at those was more important at the time. 6. Almost any right back can play left back and visa-versa and he wanted to look at the other backs in the less settled right back spot. 7. (This is a maybe) He wanted to send a message to someone on the team and not subbing Dunn sent that message. People tend to talk a lot about "locks" to the squad and the two most certain locks I believe are Ertz (As much for being to play anywhere in the center of the field as for her "normal" spot) and Dunn (for her abilities in defense and for her ability to move forward as needed and recover with speed she can, like Ertz play midfield or forward in a pinch) We need to find replacements for Ertz because of the complexities of her position on the field and her leadership but replacements for Dunn are a bit less important because, as I mentioned earlier, it is pretty easy for most right backs to switch to the left.
That is much less likely because of the reduced roster. (16 field players instead of 20) There will be four players from the WWC that do not go to the Olympics but the first four will not be replaced. I think that, at the most, there are two players that will be "new" to the roster and there may well be none. The Olympic roster is just too small to carry anyone that you are not sure of and it will be hard to be sure of players that did not go to the WWC. I think that the sub and replacement pattern from the last Olympics pretty much shows that Ellis made some mistakes in her choices for that roster. I doubt we will see the same kind of mistakes made this time. Coaches do learn from other coach's errors as well as their own. "Experience is what has us make brand new mistakes instead of the old ones."
Between retirements, pregnancies, injuries and a straight-up firing, eight players from the 2015 WWC squad weren't available for selection in 2016. Jill Ellis had two choices: go with 15 or bring in new blood.
The full Concacaf Olympic Qualification 2020 Final between Canada vs United States is available here (Facebook account is necessary): https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=548911999167854
Refresh my memory on whom was straight-up fired? I know that Solo wasn't axed until she shot her mouth off after the early Olympic exit, and even that was *officially* only a 6-month suspension.