Thoughts on the USWNT’s early World Cup exit from Dave Simeone, United Soccer Coaches Director of Education Programs
The Rest of the World is Catching Up
Since the U.S. Women’s National Team exited the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in the Round of 16 versus Sweden on lookers, fans and the press have attributed this to an assortment of factors. One of the most mentioned is “the rest of the world is catching up”.
The increase in funding is significant in the countries that are producing players because they’ve invested in women’s programming, growth and development, coaching and facilities. There are exceptions and we’ve seen some of that in this most recent world cup. There are not only resources being applied but this also reflects the changing attitudes in other countries regarding women’s football. There are also examples where early on China, for instance, was among the top performing national teams, our toughest competition for a stretch, and recently Germany, Canada, Brazil have fallen short of expectations.
The trend began in the 1990’s and early 2000’s in which developing programs studied best practices and started to apply what they had learned in player selection, tactical team organization in order compete in the present while they built an infrastructure and programming in clubs leading into national teams. France & Spain as well as Portugal, England and the Netherlands are prime examples.
Yes, the world game has evolved and has caught up.
A Focus on the External
All the conversations currently being had regarding the U.S. Women exiting in the round of 16 reflect external factors. We control none of what happens in other countries, money and resources infused into programming, good or bad, either in other national governing bodies or club environments. The world has evolved, caught up with and, in some cases, overtaken us. That’s the here and now but we have not devoted much attention or effort to the things we do influence and control, internal factors, which is our own domestic environment:
- The domestic youth environment is fractured. Multiple player pathways, multiple national championships, multiple national playing associations.
- In the year 2000, there were four playing platforms if you count the YMCA and unaffiliated leagues. Today there might be twice as many. This has ratcheted up the emphasis on the platforms resembling the structure of the NFL, NBA, MLS while youth soccer subsists on budgeted revenue from participants.
- The fractured setup between lower-division professional soccer and the top level. The absence of an interface in the pyramid. This goes well beyond promotion and relegation and impacts the domestic development of talent.
- Reducing the dependence on a strictly globalized approach to developing talent and the way coaches, directors and clubs choose to play the game (systems and tactics). The growth of a one size fits all approach deters talent development in an attempt to align to a too narrowly defined set of “criteria” of player development and how the game should be played. In a country that is a continent establishing rigid standards or guard rails results in cookie cutter players, little differentiation in individual player qualities, a static approach, and little variety in how different coaches, different climatic conditions, quality of fields, length of playing season, availability of indoor facilities or culture and how these influence attractive versus effective, how the game is played.
Influences on National Teams
These factors directly influence the eventual formation and performance of a national team:
- Suitability of the head coach
- Player identification, scouting and selection
- Players in suitable playing environments and actively playing.
- National team training windows
- Competition in training & matches
These factors are the product of decisions made to appoint coaches, create a scouting network, vertically integrate coaches and programming as well as windows of time for training, preparation, and competition.
How and What to Change?
Our priorities should incorporate solutions to our problems. Currently, even if we choose to address issues these changes move slowly. So, in addition to modifying registration, player pathways, recreational as well as competitive scheduling and game formats, reconstitute the interest of coaches and inspire their buy-in as they are an essential part of the solution. Be committed to implementation.
We have leaned on Europe, existing models, to transfer and apply to our unique setting to try and achieve greater uniformity. Contrastingly, you can review a UEFA sanctioned study in 2014 at Leeds University, “The Identification of Good Practice Principles to Inform Player Development & Coaching in European Youth Football”. This research contrasts the opinions that everything needs to be the same but also where and why in the eight Europeans countries involved in this study there are meaningful differences.
There is not one single solution to this issue, but change must be made to help propel our once-dominating National Teams back to the forefront of competition. Now I ask you…do you think the world is catching up? Or is there more to consider on our own home front?