Having a discussion about the defense now is all the more important because of its bearing on this years world cup success. An era is ending, so the logical thing to ask is what’s next? But, to understand what that change is and why it’s so monumental, let’s discuss 2015, 2019 and who’s still around.
There are familiar faces that we’ve known as the rocks of the US defense. I’ve started by looking at the backline that played during the 2015 World Cup run. Down below are the familiar four that played the knockout games—Ali Krieger, Julie Ertz, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Megan Klingenberg.
Now, we jump to 2019. The image below shows the starting backline for all of the 2019 knockout games—Kelly O’Hara, Abby Dahlkemper, Becky Sauebrunn, and Crystal Dunn.
Well, given that context, I now want to jump into the first thing to take away from these images: the consistent figure Becky Sauerbrunn. Now 38 and one of the captains of the US women’s national team—she has great seniority. She has evolved a lot as a player and leader. She wasn’t ready for the captaincy when initially given a chance at co-captain with Carli Lloyd, but when given the opportunity to regain that role, she took it. Since then, she’s been a significant part of the USWNT leadership, providing a kind of experience that few others have. If we look back to that 2015 backline, we see that Krieger has retired and Klingenberg has been a reasonably inconsistent to even non-existent presence in recent times. Ertz’s role in the team has changed ever since moving into more of a defensive midfield position. All through that, however, Sauerbrunn has remained the backbone of the USWNT defense.
Why all this preamble about her?
Well, coming into this world cup with such a young team, it was a given that Sauerbrunn’s leadership would be present. She thought that her lingering foot injury would be resolved by then, but there were setbacks and uncertainties. When the roster was leaked before its official reveal, Sauerbrunn had to quickly confront the fact that she wouldn’t be on the roster. In her appearance on the Snacks podcast she noted that she had clung on to hope of a spot—even if she couldn’t play full 90s, her spot could be justified by her important presence in the locker room. However, its impossible to build a world cup winning team around such uncertainty and she understands that.
But, that doesn’t mean her loss won’t be felt. Under normal circumstances, I might say that she needs to make way for the new generation and 38 is too old— but these aren’t normal circumstances. For example, we might have turned to the 2019 World Cup veteran Abby Dalkhepmer. But, no—due to her back injury, an injury ridden US team is short of her as well.
So, who does the US have stepping into these roles? And, how might US coach Vlatko Andonovski manage these rapid defensive changes? Well, that’s for the next piece.
