W Gold Cup Roster, Reyna and Turner, the admin know what we want 🇺🇸
A smattering of Wednesday news
USWNT Gold W Cup roster
For the first time in 2024, the team we hope will redeem us from that misery down under is called together to launch their cause.
With 23 names among them (5 more than the Olympic roster will allow), interim head woman Twila Kilgore named a squad that continues the trend from December: we’re moving on, though nobody’s entirely gone yet.
After months of limbo, a new generation continues to try their chances (Mia Fishel, Jaedyn Shaw, Korbin Albert, Olivia Moultrie, Jenna Nighswonger, Sam Coffey and Jane Campbell all return with single digit caps). Just 12 of 23 were on last summer’s World Cup roster. And 7 of 23 lifted the trophy in 2019.
A few eligible veterans continue to be left off— most notable here being Alex Morgan and Becky Sauerbrunn, the latter returning from injury last fall. Andi Sullivan, who played every minute of the ‘23 World Cup, is also missing. Savannah DeMelo, who received her first cap at the World Cup and started two games, is training with the team though, is not named to the roster.
To note: we’ve been through this before. You may recall former boss Vlatko Andonovski (now returned to his Kansas City perch) spent effort transitioning eras after the Tokyo Olympics, putting the team’s elder legends on pause. Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Kelley O’Hara and myriad others weren’t called in for months. “There’s a reason Mia Hamm is not in camp,” Vlatko once said of their absence, his spiciest-ever zinger.
The implication of course being that at some point, it’s time to move on.
But those veterans re-emerged in the lead up to the ‘23 World Cup, either by merit of their league performances, or in order to have experienced leaders around.
The Olympic roster will be small and hard to break into. Still, and despite missing two straight camps now, I don’t think Alex Morgan is definitely gone. She could very well return if she tears into the league with San Diego when the club season returns. The form of others in her position will matter, too.
Kilgore, in today’s press conference:
“In terms of Alex, and I guess this just goes for really everybody that's not here. Everything that happens in the Gold Cup will matter in terms of the future, and everything that is happening outside of the Gold Cup will matter in the future. We recognize that there's multiple players that aren't going to be in the environment, that we are still looking at, but are still very much so in the mix.”
Translation? Players in camp will need to take hold of the opportunity before them to stick around. If they knock it out of the park, they’ll be hard to supplant. But players on the outside looking in will still be watched closely, and if they prove they’re still elite, could break back in.
Morgan will have tough competition to reclaim a spot if she manages it— especially given Cat Macario’s imminent return (more below). The forward pool is deep and perhaps our most competitive. Players called in to this Gold Cup are a formidable flow of names: Rodman, Smith, Purce, Shaw, Fishel, Williams.
Waiting in the wings— in addition to Macario— is Alyssa Thompson, missing due to minor back injury. (Her sister Gisele will also train with the senior squad for the first time). But perhaps most importantly for this summer’s Olympic chances, Mal Swanson is back in training. She joins the team to train for the first time since a patellar tendon tear broke her record-breaking streak last April.
Gio Reyna ghosted Matt Turner, and his favorite movie is The Notebook
Matt Turner’s time in England has featured undulating waves of success and struggle. So it often goes in sports.
That he made it to those heights is a success in itself, of course, having only started to play the game as a teenager. But after moving from backup at Arsenal to starting keeper at Forest (after valiantly climbing his way there through MLS) Turner has faced pressure to perform.
Credit to the keeper, he spoke openly about mistakes with high stakes this week for ESPN.
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