SAN DIEGO, California — 93 seconds. That’s the time it took on Wednesday for thousands supporting the U.S. women’s national team to suddenly fall silent at Snapdragon Stadium.
Once an optimistic sea of red, white and blue fans that were hoping to watch an idyllic Southern California ending to the SheBelieves Cup, the crowd was instead left stunned as Japan’s Yuka Momiki pounced on a stray pass and found the back of the net by the second minute.
Although the U.S. would quickly find an equalizer through rising star Ally Sentnor in the 14th minute, the visitors wrestled back momentum in a game that would decide the winner of the tournament. Clever with their pressing and constantly creative with incisive passes that cooled the USWNT as the temperature dropped, Japan put on a show with their confident play that led to a second half goal from Toko Koga.
By the 85th minute, hundreds of U.S. fans had given up. Heading towards the exits, they watched their team unable to find a second goal. Head coach Emma Hayes, on the cusp of suffering her first defeat since taking charge of the USWNT last year, could do little to help her side that were outplayed in a 2-1 loss that snapped a run of five consecutive SheBelieves Cup titles. And yet, minutes after an agonizing stumble to second place, Hayes looked hurt, but at ease.
“I always go back to what our objectives were in the first place, and that was to deepen our playing pool with opportunities in high-pressure situations against top opponents, and that’s what tonight especially was about,” said the former Chelsea manager post-game.
“I think we look through the lens of our objectives and say listen, we’ve certainly looked at our players in this setting, and we’ve definitely got a better understanding of where they are within that journey…which players are ready for now, which players are ready for later, and which ones will go with the [U]23s, and which ones will develop with us.”
“From that perspective, it was mission accomplished.”
Wednesday night was a tough pill to swallow for all involved, but context matters when it comes to the tournament overall. Heading into SheBelieves Cup, the U.S. coach took a chance on a youthful squad (partly due to the unavailability of more senior players) that included 10 call-ups with four or fewer caps. Of those 10, four had zero caps to their name. Regardless of how the tournament would go on to play out, development and widening the pool was paramount to Hayes.
“I think we could look at the progress of Ally Sentnor, young player coming into the senior camp, scoring a couple of goals. Lily Yohannes, getting her first two starts at senior level,” stated Hayes as examples. “There are plenty of new combinations and new connections, which throw up a number of challenges when you play a well-polished team.”
Earlier in the tournament, there was much to like about a mixed group that recently earned a 2-0 victory over Colombia and a 2-1 win against Australia. Led by a handful of youthful game-changers that also included Michelle Cooper, Jaedyn Shaw, Giselle Thompson and Claire Hutton among others, as well as those mentioned above, it at first appeared as though Hayes would somehow find a perfect balance of experimentation and success.
But as she noted after the narrow loss to Japan, that’s not how things sometimes work out.
“We’ve won the gold medal in the summer, and we are wanting to compete to win the World Cup, so we have to keep developing and development isn’t linear. It isn’t just in one direction. I think you need moments to give you a sense of where you are in that path, but I think it’s exciting and I think our future is exciting regardless of the result,” said Hayes.
“As I’ve said, we played one of the best teams in the world today, whose nucleus have played together for a long time, and it showed. So for us, we need to build the group and the larger pool that we think are going to progress us to the World Cup, and now we have to develop our game model so that it plays out in with the qualities that we know you need to have to beat the very, very best teams at the top level.”
The good news for the USWNT and their coach is that they have time. Assuming that they will continue to be one of the two top-ranked sides in Concacaf, qualification alone for the 2027 World Cup won’t begin until the winter of 2026. Ambitions will undoubtedly be high for any competition or game they play along the way, but when peering through the microscope of their latest run this February, Hayes made a point of tempering expectations.
“We have to be patient too in our expectations,” said the coach. “We have a player in Cat Macario who has played the best part of two games for the national team in more than 24 months and shown moments of brilliance, but is still building her way back to full fitness. We’ve got the vast majority of our players just in their preseason, so it’s important for us to be reflective that we are where we are in the stage of our development.”
All that said, it’s now up to Hayes to find the right pieces of her USWNT puzzle after examining a number of different pieces. Any manager of an elite team can tell you that the tolerance for experimentation is short-lived if there’s not constant success, which means that serious criticism could soon seep in if the USWNT suffer more missteps in the near future. Looking ahead, part of that fine-tuning will need to be resolved in a pair of friendlies against Brazil on April 5 at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium and on April 8 at San Jose’s PayPal Park. In the last two meetings, the U.S. scraped past the South Americans with 1-0 wins in the Olympic final and the Gold Cup final from last year.
Building towards World Cup dreams for Hayes and her players means building off Wednesday’s result, though time will tell how long those adjustments could take.
“It’s really important to remember moments like this, the learnings that we take from it, and I look forward to the next opportunity we’re together to build on some of that progress and and learn the most important things when you play a top class opponent,” said the U.S. coach. “I’d rather do that now than much later.”
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