3 things I'm thinking about from USA vs Vietnam
30-odd minutes from now, the US play their second match and (presumably) toughest test of the group stage. As they prep for Le Oranje, here's 3 things I'm still thinking about from Vietnam:
… from the edge of summer evening in Philadelphia…
The inaugural match of the USA’s three-peat endeavor (an endeavor whose eventual success or failure remains amorphous, unclear) transpired as a 3-0 defeat of debutantes Vietnam.
A well media-trained team told the press various forms of: we could have done better, we won the game, we move on.
Ostensibly, it was a victory! Literally, that’s what it was. One wonders if that’s how it felt.
According to Doug McIntyre of FOX Sports, Alex Morgan entered the mixed zone pissed off. Great. Encouraging. (She did miss a penalty that night)
Why great?
Because that 3-0 victory felt tepid at best, inconclusive at worst. The performance was enough to win that night— but against a valiantly fought, well-organized but way outmatched Vietnam.
Whether they have the juice to truly three-peat remains to be seen.
We’ll start to see more of that question answered imminently… Before that happens, three things I’m still thinking about from USA 3 - 0 Vietnam:
Team goals vs. individual sparks
This has been a theme haunting if not everyone, than certainly me, as we observe the USWNT in Vlatko-times. The team gets by, escapes unscathed, scores goals on the wings of individual brilliance.
Every now and then, though, streaks of what could be filter through.
And so it was in the USA’s opening goal of the World Cup. Building from the back, Girma found Horan, Horan spotted Morgan, Morgan flicked to Smith, Smith collected her first World Cup goal.
That collective wavelength of attacking intuition, leading to an aesthetically pleasing team goal (which we’ve seen in spades from Japan, Spain, and Brazil so far) was encouragingly there to set this off. And as Sam Mewis told Rog Bennett on the Men in Blazers pod: you could tell they trained for that, they’d been practicing that play.
With the same starting XI running out to meet the Dutch in thirty minutes, here’s hoping we see that cohesion building, that collective attack fomenting…. while still expecting those trademark individual sparks.
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