USWNT looked awful at the World Cup. Is gold at the Olympics still in play?

At each opportunity to repeat the old company line that the standard for the U.S. women’s national team is gold medal or bust, new head coach Emma Hayes has instead paused and offered a more calculated, nuanced answer.

Hayes has not said that the goal is anything short of a gold medal, and she also has not committed to that being the only acceptable outcome for a USWNT in the middle of a rebuild. She continues to navigate a culture around the USWNT where the expectation is to win everything when she knows they can’t win everything anymore.

“I’m never going to tell anyone to not dream about winning,” Hayes told a small group of reporters at her introduction in New York City in late May. “So, go for it — it’s important for us to have that.

“But as I said before, we have to go step by step and focus on all the little processes that have to happen so we can perform at our best level. If we can perform at our best level, then we have a chance of doing things. But we’ve got work to do. The realities are that the world game is where it is, and the rest of the world do not fear the USA in the way that they once did — and that’s valid.”

The USWNT enters the 2024 Olympics with four World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals, each of which are records. The Americans have never failed to win either a World Cup or subsequent Olympics since the tournaments began running in back-to-back years in 1995 and 1996.

That record is in a precarious position in France this summer.

The USWNT endured its worst finish at a major tournament in history last summer, losing a penalty shootout to Sweden — an old foe, adding salt to the wound — in the round of 16, marking the first time the program had finished worse than third place at a World Cup.

It wasn’t just that the result was bad in a vacuum, either: The Americans played so unimaginatively that they managed only the narrowest of escapes out of the group stage by way of a scoreless draw with Portugal, saved by mere few inches as a late Portugal shot clattered the post. It was the clearest evidence yet that this was no longer the mighty American world power, the team that had won back-to-back World Cups in 2015 and 2019. The world hadn’t just caught up — other top teams had surpassed the United States.

Former head coach Vlatko Andonovski shouldered much of the public scrutiny, but players nearly unanimously struggled to adjust to opponents in real time. It was clear the issues ran deeper than could be fixed by parting ways with a coach. Now, as the Olympics loom, questions leftover from the World Cup linger: Are players prepared to compete in a modern landscape with teams more competitive than ever?

During the World Cup, Hayes herself publicly questioned the USWNT’s capabilities as a distant observer and part-time pundit, pointing to a lack of creativity among the Americans. She was also ultimately hired as an answer to such questions. Her hiring was widely lauded as the best possible outcome of the new manager search, a level of ambition and reform that stood in stark contrast to U.S. Soccer’s decision to go with the status quo on the men’s side, the results of which bore out at this year’s Copa America.

Now, the Olympics have arrived, and Americans, as impatient as they are, want immediate answers and returns. The last Olympic gold medal for the USWNT came in 2012. High-level sources across the sport in the time since the USWNT’s 2023 World Cup exit have expressed concern that a second straight poor showing at a major tournament could set back the program for years and further embolden the rest of the world.

The reality, however, is that Hayes’ primary remit is to win the 2027 World Cup. While the Olympics will always have some cachet, the Women’s World Cup — a singular spotlight for teams to take over — is the most impactful podium. It’s also one far enough away to allow for a realistic amount of preparation time.

Neither Hayes nor U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker would admit it, but Hayes’ hire was clearly one focused long term on the next World Cup — not short term on the Olympics. Hayes and U.S. Soccer agreed to allow Hayes to finish the European season with Chelsea, meaning she would be left with four friendlies and less than two months on the sidelines before the Olympics.

Nobody, even someone with the lauded coaching acumen of Hayes, could be expected to develop a gold-medal-winning team in that time, especially not a team that has been overhauled following such recent disappointment. Hayes has said as much, perhaps most recently with a tinge of frustration after Tuesday’s frustrating 0-0 draw with Costa Rica in the team’s sendoff game.

Hayes paused for 10 seconds in the middle of her first answer to a question that alluded to disappointment in the scoreless draw, before saying: “[Trinity Rodman] might score a worldie in the last minute, but the goalkeeper’s had an outstanding game. Yes, we need to be more clinical. I don’t need to state the obvious. But I think that when you’ve had maybe half a dozen training sessions in total since I’ve been the coach, I think it’s a pretty good return so far.”

Hayes is a realist, and the reality of this Olympics is an uncomfortable one for a USWNT program that, with only minimal hyperbole, won everything all the time in the past: These days, gold is not the make-or-break standard — not at this tournament.

A harsher, objective view might be that gold would be an overachievement at this point in the U.S. program’s trajectory. The U.S. is now ranked fifth in the world, the team’s worst FIFA ranking in history. Before last year’s World Cup, the U.S. was ranked first or second for all 20 years of the ranking’s existence.

The Americans are not remotely the favorites at the 2024 Olympics. A bronze medal, which the U.S. won three years ago in Tokyo, would be a significant achievement. And in a group with Zambia — whom Hayes rightfully noted shouldn’t be overlooked — Germany and Australia, the range of realistic outcomes for the USWNT at the 2024 Olympics runs the gamut from a group-stage catastrophe to a gold medal. Anything including and between those outcomes is realistic in today’s landscape.

Despite the USWNT’s recent woes, a gold medal is possible for several reasons: This U.S. team has plenty of talent on the field and in the coaching box, and its competitors have their own injuries, and recent ebbs and flows to form. Hayes is among the best coaches in the world, and the USWNT has a world-class front line in Sophia Smith, Trinity Rodman and Mallory Swanson, and one of the best central defenders in the world in Naomi Girma.

Yet, this USWNT squad is also not that different from the one that struggled at last year’s World Cup. Ten of the 18 players on the roster were part of the 2023 World Cup, with veteran forward Alex Morgan‘s omission marking the most high-profile change. Hayes’ preferred starting lineup — the one that defeated Mexico 1-0 on July 13 — features eight players who prominently featured in and started at the 2023 World Cup. The USWNT’s overhaul is not specifically about personnel but evolving and sophisticating ideas and principles.

Still, the historical reliance on transitional play remains the USWNT’s most effective approach, one that Hayes explicitly says she wants to evolve. Tuesday’s scoreless draw with Costa Rica seemed eerily like one of the USWNT’s poor performances from last year’s World Cup, where a disciplined defensive scheme from an opponent left the Americans without enough ideas or, more simply, incapable or unlucky in front of net.

It was an anticlimactic sendoff game that overshadowed some of the progress made over the past eight months since Hayes was hired, including her involvement from afar alongside interim coach Twila Kilgore. There has been talent identification and development, like the emergence of Sam Coffey as the teams’ defensive midfielder and Jenna Nighswonger as a modern, attacking left full-back. Each of those have been areas of need for the USWNT.

Tactically, the USWNT has been nimbler over the past nine months, rotating midfield configurations between a double pivot — the solution that the team needed but turned to too late at the 2023 World Cup — and a more aggressive midfield trio. Hayes and Kilgore have experimented with a three-back in different phases of games, as well as different cadences of pressure on opponents.

In those ways, progress has been clear. There’s a new coach with a decent amount of new personnel. Without doubt, there are fresh ideas being experimented with and implanted. Realistically, though, that entire algorithm requires time to run to its conclusion. Major tournaments are about timing as much as they are talent, and this is a U.S. squad at the beginning of a takeoff process that will incur more turbulence along the way.

“Where are we compared to our best version of ourselves?” Hayes rhetorically asked reporters at her introductory briefing. That is the gap she is focused on closing: the one between the USWNT that wins tournaments and the one that crashed out. Only then can that be followed by catching up to the rest of the world — or, to “beat the f—ing Spanish,” the reigning world and European champions, as Hayes cheekily joked recently.

Dreaming of the gold medal makes sense for the USWNT. It’s in the American DNA, Hayes has said, and she won’t change that. But as Hayes has also said, there’s a lot of work to get there.