ImagnThe USWNT beat Iceland 3-1, and proved once again how lethal this team can be, displaying depth even when it isn't at full strength
This is a message to the rest of the world: good luck. When facing the U.S. women's national team, it's always going to be a long night. Their attack is too deep. Their forwards are too talented. Even when the now-famous Triple Espresso is down a shot, there's essentially nothing you can really do.
That was the big story of Thursday's U.S. women's national team win over Iceland, a 3-1 triumph in Austin, Texas. It wasn't one individual player. It wasn't even one individual nicknamed trio. No, this was about depth, about the USWNT sending wave after wave at a team until they finally broke under an onslaught of unmatched quality.
Some of that quality came from Sophia Smith, who ultimately scored a stunning exclamation point of a goal in the game's final moments to build on her Olympic breakout. Some came from Jaedyn Shaw, who, like Smith, came off the bench to dribble through multiple Iceland defenders to rebound from her lack of Olympic breakout and help erase a 1-1 score. And then there was Alyssa Thompson, back in the USWNT after missing out this summer, striking a stunner of her own by curling a shot to the far post to open the scoring early on – her first international goal.
You never know who the star will be. It changes from night to night. Even with Trinity Rodman absent, there's no dropoff. There are too many superstars – or superstars in the making – on this team, so many options for Emma Hayes to experiment with. It seems like she can't go wrong with any of them, and that competition between them will only make them stronger. Shaw, who missed the USWNT Olympic gold medal run because of injury, summarized the moment.
“It was a really tough month for me, but it was also the best month of my life," she said, looking back the Paris Games, "and I really learned a lot from it. It made me hungrier to come back and produce the same, if not more.”
Production is what the USWNT was all about Thursday night, keeping Hayes unbeaten in 11 games with the USWNT. How's that for a start to a job?
So, again, good luck to everyone else. Thursday night was a reminder of what we learned this summer: this USWNT is a freight train, no matter who leads the way on any given night.
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