FAYETTEVILLE, Georgia — For decades, the United States was the gold standard in women‘s soccer.
The U.S. women’s national team won the first World Cup in 1991 and three more since, the most of any country. They are now five-time Olympic champions after winning the gold medal in 2024. Top teams worldwide have long tried to replicate the USWNT’s success, often talking about matching the relentless “American mentality” of winning.
However, the Americans enter a pair of friendlies against Spain on Saturday and Tuesday as the team ranked No. 2 in the world. Spain, not the U.S., are current World Cup title-holders and the top team in FIFA‘s world rankings. And Spain, not the U.S., has set the new global standard in women’s soccer over the past few years by winning in style.
Spain’s 2023 World Cup title cemented that position. Their entertaining, dominant, possession-based approach finally paid off on the senior level. The U.S. crashed out of that World Cup in the round of 16, the program’s worst showing at a major tournament.
Individually, Spanish players are widely considered the best in the world. A Spanish player has won the Ballon d’Or for five years running.
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Ahead of these two highly anticipated meetings between the U.S. and Spain, it is safe to say the apprentice has become the master: The USWNT must learn from Spain’s long-term success. How?
Style of play is the easy answer, but it is outdated. Both USWNT head coach Emma Hayes and captain Lindsey Heaps pushed back this week on the framing of Spain as a possession team and the U.S. as a transitional team.
That was true of the Americans at the World Cup three years ago, when the team’s direct approach proved too easy to solve for even mid-level opponents who have improved, like Portugal. But the U.S. has evolved since Hayes took the job after that worst-ever World Cup finish for the Americans, and Spain has added more direct play to their once too-passive possession.
“Patience” is the better word for what the U.S. can learn from Spain — both on the field and in long-term player development. Patience is a word that could be heard around U.S. Soccer’s new National Training Center outside of Atlanta this week.
Hayes spoke about the need for it when she named her roster. She said this week that the danger Spain poses is their ability to identify momentary lapses by their opponent, and to strike quickly. The U.S. has improved its collective composure, but Spain still sets the standard.
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“It’s not as simple as go all out,” Hayes said. “This is a team, you press in the wrong moments, they pop the ball around you and create chances.”
At training this week, the Americans worked on how to handle Spain’s high pressure — the defining characteristic of the USWNT’s 2019 World Cup-winning team, notably — and how to close space in the midfield to limit Spain’s time on the ball. Patience, and the ability to avoid panicking, is how Spain’s players create time for themselves in possession.
Hayes, like any coach, said she is focused on her own team and asserting their dominance. She reiterated that while answering several questions in multiple press conferences over the past week.
And at one point during Tuesday’s training session, Hayes stopped play during an 11-v-11 scrimmage and concluded her tactical point by shouting an affirmation to the group: “We are the best team in the world.” It was an explicit reminder of the stakes of these two games. These matches will simulate knockout football, Hayes said earlier that day.
The U.S. women have also reinvented their identity under Hayes. In April, they out-possessed a Japan team, like Spain, has historically controlled the ball against opponents.
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U.S. midfielders including Heaps, teenager Lily Yohannes and Ballon d’Or nominee Rose Lavelle allow the Americans to keep the ball and combine centrally in ways the did not previously. In the past — even during their run to an Olympic gold medal — the midfield was often bypassed in favor of more direct play.
Now, there is a greater balance in how the USWNT plays. They can out-possess Japan or play direct and physical against Brazil, as they did in heated matches in June.
“I think it’s really clear the DNA of U.S. Soccer has always been to be a really good counter-attacking team, and I never want to lose that because I think it’s an important part to do,” Hayes said. “But I also think we have become much more deliberate, much more patient in our approach to creating chances.”
Heaps told ESPN’s Futbol W this week that the U.S. studied film of Spain and found that many of their recent goals have come in moments of transition. However, Heaps said that “when they don’t feel like they’re in control, it’s a weird place for them to be in.” Those ideological styles of play will clash on Saturday and Tuesday when the USWNT hosts Spain in two friendlies.
Still, the wider lesson that the U.S. can learn from Spain is something that will take years or decades to come to fruition: Spain’s success at the senior level originates from an emphasis on development of players from young ages. That development creates a clear, consistent identity no matter which players get called up to the national team.
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“I don’t think you can replicate it in the NWSL, because you’re not being tested at that level tactically,” Hayes told reporters this week about the challenge that Spain presents. “It’s the tactical level. You’re playing against a team that have been built through a system since the age of eight. So, the way they play together isn’t like playing in the NWSL or a position where you might have had a lot of changes from season to season. You’re watching a synergy that has been developed over 10-15 years.”
Hayes has hammered on this point since taking the job as U.S. coach. She continues to focus on a long-term vision for the program so it can maintain its place as a world power in the coming decades.
Hayes recently stressed this development point again around the U20 World Cup, noting that Spain’s 2023 World Cup title came after a decade of dominance at the youth international level. Many of those players progressed through Spain’s youth system together and created chemistry that cannot be easily or quickly replicated.
The U.S. must improve its system for players ages 17-23 like Spain, Hayes has said.
“I don’t ever want to face that period again where we have to develop a whole generation after the World Cup,” she said last week.
Those are challenges that the U.S. Soccer Federation must solve at a high level. They are not new, either: the confusing and competitive youth soccer landscape, and the tension between club and country over player availability will persist.
Spain’s federation is hardly perfect, as shown by the fallout from the 2023 World Cup and the ousting of disgraced president Luis Rubiales and head coach Jorge Vilda. The system Spain has in place to produce world-class players, however, is something the United States must envy. There are geographic and cultural differences that are far too vast to make that change happen quickly, but Hayes has been working on solutions in the background, including at a conference the federation organized last week to share her methodology with coaches outside of U.S. Soccer.
Systemic changes will require significant work and a different kind of patience from the United States. Their effects likely would not be felt until long after Hayes leaves her role as coach.
More immediately, the U.S. women will play Spain for the first time in four years on Saturday and get a first-hand look at the patient, precise brand of soccer they have tried to integrate into their own identity. And they will see just how it matches up to the new gold standard.
