United States women’s national team head coach Emma Hayes said on Monday that her players need to be “tougher” and get out of the comfort zones in which they typically operate domestically.
The USWNT is in Brazil this week for a pair of rare road friendlies to prepare for next year’s World Cup in the country by experiencing those hostile environments.
The Americans lost to Brazil, 2-1 on Saturday in a physical match in São Paulo. The two teams play again in another friendly in Fortaleza on Tuesday.
“This is unlike anything else,” Hayes said. “They live and they breathe it in a certain way. This is the most extreme but beautiful end of it. The crowds are fantastic, but you have to perform with all of that.
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“So, I think that’s why I keep leaning into the fact that we create too many perfect conditions. We’ve created a culture in our football world in the United States that’s, ‘Well do we need to do as much of that? Do we less of this?’
“We’ve got to be tougher. We’ve got to be tougher in a lot of things, and we’ve got to be more durable. And we’ve got to expose ourselves to the elements of the game.”
Hayes said that this trip to Brazil is the perfect test to make the USWNT uncomfortable. She lauded a Brazilian culture where soccer is “more than life and death,” which isn’t the case in the United States. The USWNT coach spoke of how the Brazilian team warmed up on Saturday by grappling without a ball, cones or lines. Hayes said the crowd cheered every time a USWNT goalkeeper got scored on during warmups.
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And then there was the match itself on Saturday, with 16 total fouls called and umpteen others ignored as the crowd of about 31,000 fans drowned out communication between players as momentum shifted. USWNT forward Sophia Wilson scored two minutes in and Brazil scored twice in the ensuing 12 minutes.
A crowd of 40,000 or more is expected for Tuesday’s rematch at Arena Castelão, which holds around 57,000 people. Hayes faced Barcelona at Camp Nou when she coached Chelsea and said the experience in Brazil is on another level. “It doesn’t matter how much you prepare for certain things; you just don’t know until you’re in it,” Hayes said.
“What I will say is — this is to the whole world — this is something else. The way football is played here, the way football is experienced here, the way the crowd leans in as a 12th player. “I’ve been here a few times as a fan watching football.
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Experiencing that as a coach was an incredible experience and one that is going to intensify tomorrow.” Hayes said on Monday that there is “progress” being made to provide U.S. players with tougher playing conditions that will better prepare them for unique international challenges. There are collaborative working groups featuring members of U.S. Soccer and the NWSL trying to make the American better replicate global competitions.
Hayes said that, over a four-year World Cup cycle, USWNT players play a full year fewer games compared to some other nations. The NWSL has drastically reduced midweek games in recent years at the request of players.
Hayes said on Monday that Mexico’s Liga MX Femenil plays nearly three times as many midweek games. (Club America just defeated two NWSL teams on the way to claiming the Concacaf W Champions Cup.) Many top European leagues play multiple cups during the regular season, unlike the NWSL.
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One solution could be a prospective competition first reported by ESPN: an inter-league cup between teams from the NWSL, the USL Super League (also sanctioned as a first division) and the forthcoming second division, WPSL Pro. The NWSL has also teased the idea of creating a second division.
Twenty-one of the 26 players on the current USWNT roster play in the NWSL.
“You need a squad because there are different types of games,” Hayes said. “There’s gonna be some players that are really gonna shine in this game and there’s gonna be some players that are gonna really shine in a different type of game. I’ve learned which players can shine in this one and which ones have got work-ons.”
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Hayes refused to discuss lineups or tactics for Tuesday, saying that she is treating this as a dry run for the World Cup and she wouldn’t discuss them in that setting either.
But she hammered on the point that her players must better deal with whatever is thrown at them, from off-ball fouls that feel “almost illegal,” to the crowd and potentially poor refereeing.
“Accept it,” Hayes said. “It’s an uncontrollable. You cannot change it. Get over it. Get on with it.”
