World Cup: USA limp into the knockout stage

The unthinkable almost happened.

The clock had already ticked over into injury time in the USA's final group game when Portugal's Ana Capeta suddenly broke through the American defense and shot.

Goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher was beaten, and as the ball hurtled towards goal, it looked to all 43,000 fans inside Eden Park in Auckland that the defending champions were going out. But the shot cannoned back off the post.

The final whistle blew a few minutes later, a goalless draw confirming the USA's passage to the Round of 16, but there was little joy on the faces of Megan Rapinoe and co, who knew they had come within a few inches of a humiliating group stage exit, about which they could hardly have complained.

After an unconvincing win over minnows Vietnam and a 1-1 draw against the Netherlands, another insipid attacking display saw them struggle to break down tournament debutants Portugal, who showed no fear of their decorated opponents.

As it stands, the USA's bid to win a third straight World Cup title is still alive. But the manner of their qualification for the knockout stage, winning just one out of three games and finishing as runners-up in Group E, inspires little confidence.

Rapinoe: 'Performances aren't where we want them'

"Obviously we didn't win three games in a row, so the performances aren't where we want them," Rapinoe admitted to DW after the game. "I think we're still trying to find those combinations that work."

Goalkeeper Naeher sounded a more positive note. "We're now three games into the tournament, and the goal is to build from game to game," she told DW. "We want to be peaking at the right time and playing our best at the end."

Nevermind the end; the immediate focus has to be on the last 16, likely against unbeaten Group G leaders Sweden, and discovering a chemistry which has so far eluded a team which has undergone so much change since 2019.

USWNT: The changing of the guard

14 of the 23 squad members are taking part on the biggest stage for the first time. While many of them are either supremely talented youngsters or experienced NWSL stars, change on such a scale always carried the risk that the magic the old guard could conjure would be impossible to recreate.

It's not that the team is too young, or too old for that matter. Trinity Rodman, playing at her first World Cup at age 21, has not managed to reproduce her sparkling NWSL appearances in New Zealand.

But neither has Alex Morgan, a veteran of the successful 2015 and 2019 squads, showed anything like the kind of form that made her the most feared striker in the game.

It's a subject the players were asked about repeatedly ahead of the tournament when goalkeeper Naeher, one of the few in the squad who played at both of the previous two tournaments, seemed unfazed by the challenge.

"It's about getting that right balance and connection of using those of us who have a lot of experience … and then also taking some of the freshness, the newness, the young ones, and combining that to create the culture and the team that we have right now," she had said.

Can Andonovski settle the nerves?

The players are not the only ones responsible for making that happen. Head coach Vlatko Andonovski, himself a World Cup debutant, has had four years to oversee the transition from the heroes of 2019 to the current crop of players. And while injury has deprived him of certain veterans, most notably captain Becky Sauerbrunn, this is largely his group.

When asked why the USA had "only" managed a 3-0 victory over Vietnam in their opening game, Andonovski said the team was nervous.

It was the kind of admission that would have seen the media pack collectively fall off their chairs in 2019, when the team was so confident they drew accusations of arrogance from some quarters. "Nervous" was not a word which featured in that squad's vocabulary.

In his struggle to find a solution against Portugal, Andonovski turned first to 38-year-old Rapinoe, and then to Rodman, off the bench. 17 years separate the two forwards, but neither youth nor experience could provide the spark that has been lacking in this version of the team.

The USWNT mindset

In the knockout rounds they will not have the same margin of error that the group stage has afforded them. If the team doesn't click soon, their long spell at the pinnacle of women's football is likely to come to an end.

"Each year, in each World Cup, we have had the opportunity to kind of build on the groundwork set before us," Naeher told reporters ahead of the tournament. "And it's now our responsibility to continue that mindset and that mentality of the US Women's National Team."

The USA setup is too professional, too well funded, and too lavishly stocked with existing and potential talent to fail in that mission statement in the long term.

In the short term, they still have a chance to turn it around. In Auckland, they had a few centimeters of goalpost to thank for that.

Edited by Matt Ford