Why USWNT prospects are running out of time to make the cut for U.S. squad

Since last year’s Olympic gold medal triumph, U.S. women’s national team head coach Emma Hayes has been handing out international debuts like Oprah Winfrey’s Ultimate Car Giveaway: “You get a cap! You get a cap!”

Four players joined their first senior USWNT training camp this week, bringing Hayes’ tally to 27 first-time call-ups since arriving on the sidelines just over a year ago. Nineteen players to date have earned their first USWNT caps under Hayes.

All of which has amounted to the most drastic overhaul in the 40-year history of the world’s most successful international women’s soccer team. Recent USWNT lineups have been the youngest and least experienced in over two decades.

However, this phase of drastic experimentation is ending soon.

Hayes recently told ESPN that, after this window, which includes a pair of games against Ireland and a friendly against Canada over the next seven days, she expects to have narrowed down her roster to the core of players she will lean on at World Cup qualifying next year, and at the 2027 Women’s World Cup.

Effectively, that makes this week a final in-person audition for some hopefuls trying to break through and climb the U.S. depth chart. There will be no more chances for players to prove they belong before FIFA’s international calendar keeps the team apart until October.

This is an inflection point for the USWNT pool, which expanded over the past year but will soon become focused on a core group of players again soon. As Hayes raved about some of the newcomers to the USWNT roster last week, she said she made those personnel decisions “knowing that this is probably the last moment we will be considering players from outside that net with the volume that we are.”

Hayes has assembled a roster of almost entirely NWSL-based players as she analyzes who can make an impact internationally and who is just an exceptional league player — an important distinction that the coach recently highlighted. The coach’s task will be to evaluate how players do in this ongoing camp in addition to the previous four training camps this year.

As such, there is undoubtedly an urgency for some players to impress the USWNT coach right now. This week is their last shot to make their case to Hayes while she’s standing a few feet away on the training field or in the meeting room — integral parts of team selection that are almost entirely shielded from the public eye.

Goalkeeper is the position where the most urgency is needed. Angelina Anderson, Claudia Dickey and Mandy McGlynn have a combined three caps (all for McGlynn, and all from the past seven months). They’ve all had strong moments (and some low points) in NWSL play, but they haven’t had much face time with Hayes.

All three goalkeepers will be under increased scrutiny at this camp with more experienced players missing — and they might be fighting to join Phallon Tullis-Joyce, who looks like the favored No. 1 based on recent lineups.

A large group of mostly inexperienced defenders, along with the three goalkeepers in camp, will have another chance to build rapport with all-world defender Naomi Girma, the only European-based player on the most recent USWNT roster. Remove the experience of Girma and Emily Sonnett, and the other eight defenders combined have 18 caps.

Tara McKeown and Emily Sams appear to have established themselves as the next center backs in line on the depth chart. They’ve each been solid in the NWSL and Sams already has an Olympic gold medal (earned before her first cap, uniquely) after surfacing on Hayes’ radar last year.

But the fullback position outside of Emily Fox (who got the camp off to rest) is still anyone’s guess. Hayes is still looking for answers — and she’s using this final experimentation window to widen her search. Kerry Abello just earned her first cap there earlier this month, Avery Patterson debuted earlier this year, and Izzy Rodriguez and Lilly Reale (whom Hayes called “outstanding” and “top class” for NJ/NY Gotham FC this season) are two of the first-time call-ups on this roster.

All four players have been standouts in the NWSL, and this is their last chance for a while to earn an in-person evaluation by Hayes and her staff. It is also the chance to leave a strong in-person impression for some of the newer regulars (relatively speaking) like forwards Michelle Cooper, Yazmeen Ryan and Emma Sears, to make a breakthrough.

There are wrinkles to this squad selection process, however, and Hayes was quick to point out that what’s best for each player will not look like linear progress to the public. The absence of a player from the team in the future doesn’t rule her out of Hayes’ plans entirely.

Eighteen-year-old Jordyn Bugg, for example, joined the USWNT for the first time this week, but Hayes said she expects to have Bugg play for the U-23s and in the U-20 World Cup in the future “because that’s in the best interest of her long-term development strategy.” Hayes used Bugg as an example of how the team also needs to prepare for the 2028 Olympics and 2031 World Cup, which will each be played on home soil.

Attacking midfielder Jaedyn Shaw is the present-day example of this fluidity. Shaw has struggled to fit in with the North Carolina Courage after an offseason trade, and she has spent the most recent two international windows with the U-23s. Hayes has repeatedly lauded Shaw and said that the talented playmaker will be a big part of the USWNT going forward. If she can find her feet in the league — she just scored her first goal for the Courage in a crucial win on Saturday — she should be in Hayes’ mix come October.

Hayes is a studious coach who says she watches everything, whether in person or on late-night streams from her home in England. Recent history supports the notion that she will call up players based on their league form, but Hayes keeps reminding everyone that she “can only pick the players that are available” rather than “the very best 23, 26 players.”

Except for one game, Hayes has not had her entire starting forward line of Trinity Rodman, Mallory Swanson or Sophia Wilson available since the Olympics last August.

“I think anybody that’s called up at any given time — I want everybody to know that we’ll watch every game, and if there is a drop in form or there is a drop in consistency, it doesn’t necessarily mean that players leave that pool,” Hayes told ESPN. “But we expect you to keep pushing all the time because we know what the quality is like worldwide.”

Come October, Hayes will assemble a roster that will largely consist of the players tasked with qualifying for and winning the 2027 World Cup. There will be plenty of personnel and lineup changes over the next two years along that journey to Brazil, but this week is the last opportunity for many players to insert themselves directly into Hayes’ vision for success at the 2027 World Cup.

Failure to do so won’t necessarily mark the end of the USWNT dream for players, but it will make it more difficult to get back into the mix. Hayes wants to have a core group set ahead of the USWNT’s games in October, and Hayes has already accrued a decent sample size of evidence over the past six to eight months of extended auditions.

Against Ireland and Canada — and in the trainings in between — players will have one more golden chance to show they can contribute on the big stage.