Author: Ezra Fischer

The 2019 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Friday, June 7 in France. The United States team is the defending champions but their path to repeating is a perilous one. The field is stronger than it ever has been before and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of the top ten teams lifting the trophy on July 7.

To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Megan Rapinoe

Position: Forward

Club: Reign FC

Number: 15

National team experience: 153 appearances with 44 goals scored. During the 2019 SheBelieves Cup, Rapinoe played all but seven minutes and was a co-captain.

What I wrote in 2015: Megan Rapinoe is a world class playmaker. She has exceptional vision… She seems to know exactly where to put the ball. Her other exceptional skill… is her technical ability to pass the ball to just the spot she wants. In the flow of play, Rapinoe’s approach to playing midfielder is acquire the ball, survey the field, move the ball to the player in the position most dangerous to the opposing team. Rapinoe takes the majority of the more technical set pieces, including corner kicks. Her skill on the ball allows her to be a formidable goal-scorer, especially on shots from a distance, but it’s not her primary focus.

What to expect from Megan Rapinoe in 2019: Four years later and coming of a serious knee injury, everything I wrote about Megan Rapinoe is… still true. She’s a fixture on the left wing, still making herself available for service and doing wonderful things with the ball once she has it. In recent years, she can get slight tunnel vision on scoring instead of applying herself to what is her greater skill of playmaking. I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that on the world’s biggest stage, she can put aside her goal scoring ambitions in lieu of contributing to team victories. A less celebrated facet of Rapinoe’s game is her defensive ability. She rarely needs to show it during national team games, but when called upon, Rapinoe can be a determined defender with an impressive slide tackle.

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Non-gendered personal interest item:  One of the very earliest athletes to support Coliln Kaepernick’s activism, Rapinoe will continue protesting injustice, racial and otherwise, during this year’s World Cup by standing silently during the anthem with her hands by her sides.

Links: Rapinoe’s Wikipedia page, U.S. Soccer page, and Twitter.

The 2019 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Friday, June 7 in France. The United States team is the defending champions but their path to repeating is a perilous one. The field is stronger than it ever has been before and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of the top ten teams lifting the trophy on July 7.

To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Alyssa Naeher

Position: Goalie

Club: Chicago Red Stars

Number: 1

National team experience: Naeher has appeared in 46 games for the USWNT and has 24 shutouts. During the 2019 SheBelieves Cup, she (like each of the three goalies on the roster) played one of three games.

What I wrote in 2015: Naeher is the least likely player on the entire team to make it into a game. This isn’t a reflection on her, she’s a great goalie, but Hope Solo is a fixture in the net and Ashlyn Harris seems to be coach Jill Ellis’ second choice. Naeher’s path to playing would be a Hope Solo injury followed by a poor Harris performance. Seems unlikely. If called on Naeher could do the job. A tall goalie at 5’9″, Naeher is used to being called on in desperation. She won National Women’s Soccer League goalkeeper of the year in 2014 despite playing for the Boston Breakers, a team with a shaky defense that finished second to last in the league.

What to expect from Alyssa Naeher in 2019:  One sign that the USWNT is being treated seriously by the sports media world is that there’s an obvious storyline about it that’s getting emphasized beyond reason. That story is the absense of Hope Solo, who dominated the goalie position for the team for more than a decade. What will happen now that she’s gone? As the first choice goalie for the team, Naeher is inevitably a part of this story. She has to put up with everyone’s questions. Can she rise to the occasion? Can she be as good as Solo? To support these doubts, critics may point to what has looked like an increasingly shaky defense since Solo left and certainly more goals scored against. It must be incredibly aggravating. As a fan of the Boston Breakers (who sadly folded a couple of seasons ago), I got a chance to watch Naeher play in person. She’s great. She’s rarely out of position and when caught out can use her tall frame and enviable athletisism to compensate. She’s good distributing the ball to defenders. I truly can’t imagine her being anything other than completely solid. I have my doubts about this team’s ability to prevent goals being scored against them, but they lie with the field players, not the goalie.

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Non-gendered personal interest item:  Okay, I guess this is pretty cool – USA Today (of all organizations) released an augmented reality game where you get to pretend to be Alyssa Naeher and try to stop penalty shots. Just make sure you clear that heirloom lamp out of the way before you try it…

Links: A New York Times article about Naeher, plus her Wikipedia page, U.S. Soccer page, and Twitter.

The 2019 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Friday, June 7 in France. The United States team is the defending champions but their path to repeating is a perilous one. The field is stronger than it ever has been before and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of the top ten teams lifting the trophy on July 7.

To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Kelley O’Hara

Position: Defender

Club: Utah Royals FC

Number: 5

National team experience: O’Hara has played 118 games for the national team and scored two goals. During the 2019 SheBelieves Cup, when she was recovering from injuries, she started each game and was subbed for mid way through.

What I wrote in 2015: All [O’Hara’s] versatility is impressive, but I wonder if it has done her a disservice. It’s hard to be the best at any one thing when you’re asked to do so many different things. Coming into this year’s World Cup, O’Hara has been unable to grab a starting position in any position. She’s played as a wing-defensive sub and also as a reserve midfielder. It’s comforting to have such a versatile substitute on the bench, ready to step in wherever she’s needed, but you have to ask yourself what could have been if she had been able to play one position for her whole career.

What to expect from Kelley O’Hara in 2019:  I was lucky enough to snag a ticket to the World Cup semifinals back in 2015 between the United States and Germany. Having watched both women’s and men’s teams lose to Germany in World Cups before, my heart was in my mouth from a few hours before the game until the final whistle. So, I’ll never forget watching O’Hara score from right midfield just a few minutes after she came in as a sub in the second half. After the game, I heard about how coach Jill Ellis decided to put O’Hara in (in discussion with an assistant coach, she said “You know, we need a bitch. Get Kelley.”) In the context of sports, outside of super stars, it’s hard to imagine a higher compliment. What Ellis meant was that O’Hara would rise to the occasion, makes her opponents’ lives miserable, and finds ways to get even greater performance out of her teammates. Although O’Hara is a veteran of two World Cups, her career arc is still trending up. A perfect fit for Ellis’ plan of having versitile two-way players at outside defense, O’Hara is assumed, despite struggling with an ankle injury this spring, to be the starting right fullback. If her body cooperates, you should expect to see O’Hara dominating the right side of the field, flying up in overlapping runs on offense and racing back on defense when needed. She’s a tough tackler. She can run around you or, if she decides to, run over you.

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Non-gendered personal interest item: Don’t misspell O’Hara’s last name. It has an apostrophe! That’s hard for some pieces of technology, including custom jersey software. Earlier this year, O’Hara responded on Twitter to a fan who was trying to customize a jersey from Fanatics.com but could’t get the apostrophe in O’Hara! I believe it’s now been fixed.

Links: Articles about O’Hara from goal.com and ESPN plus her Wikipedia page, U.S. Soccer page, and Twitter.

Although our sporting culture still has many miles to travel before it even gets close to equality in covering men’s and women’s sports, things have improved measurably during the eight (!!) years since I started this website. That’s why I was so surprised to find (or not find) a simple spreadsheet with games, times, and television listings for the 2019 World Cup. So, I did what any good nerd would do and made one myself.

Feel free to copy and paste or download the data here.

While I was at it, I got all excited and created a calendar as well as a by group version of the data. In these, I tagged the USWNT games and, based on a highly secret, proprietary mix of FIFA rankings and intuition, I highlighted the games I would most recommend watching. Based on standings and how the knockout stage sets up, I might update this and upload new versions later on.

If you’d prefer to view these as .pdfs or even print them out and put them on your fridge, here you go! Click on the images to download or print.

Enjoy the games!

Calendar

List of Games

By Group

The 2019 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Friday, June 7 in France. The United States team is the defending champions but their path to repeating is a perilous one. The field is stronger than it ever has been before and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of the top ten teams lifting the trophy on July 7.

To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Julie Ertz

Position: Midfielder

Club: Chicago Red Stars

Number: 8

National team experience: Ertz has 82 appearances for the national team and has scored 18 goals. During the 2019 SheBelieves Cup, she never left the field.

What I wrote in 2015: She’s a calming and confidence inspiring presence for teammates and fans. The United States often dominates games and so [Ertz’s] main job from her central defensive position is to organize, play passes up to the midfielders, and stay vigilant against any budding counter-attacks. When the team faces tougher competition, as it will during the World Cup, it will be interesting to see if [Ertz] will be able to remain as physically dominant and mentally prepared as she has so far in her career. If she does, there’s no reason to think she won’t play every minute of the World Cup for team USA. Watch for her leaping, aerial runs to the near post on corner kicks and free kicks.

What to expect from Julie Ertz in 2019:  Since the 2015 World Cup, Julie Ertz has been shifted from playing right next to Becky Sauerbrunn as a center defender to playing right in front of her as a defensive midfielder. In the realm of coach Jill Ellis’ much critisized positional fiddling around, this has been the most stable and most easily understandable move. Yes, Ertz was a rock in the back line, playing a big role in the 2015 World Cup win, but she’s been just as stable playing the “number 6” role. It suits her aggressive and competitive play even perhaps a bit better than central defender. As a central defender, your job is mostly to stand at the back and repel anyone who comes at you. As a central defensive midfielder, you’re often matched up one to one, mano a mano (hand to hand, not man to man, btw) with the best offensive player on the other team. That’s the type of direct challenge I can picture Julie Ertz really getting fired up for. In this year’s World Cup, that’s what I’d bet on — Ertz frustrating the hell out of the other team’s best attacker.

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Non-gendered personal interest item: When asked about her ability to score goals on leaping headers by Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl, Ertz responded, naturally, by talking about her aggressiveness. She said, “I just love trying to score, I guess… I’m not backing out, so someone has to…” You might think this is just fluff, unless you have ever seen her play or if you heard the next thing she said, which was “I’ve knocked my teeth out so many times. My mom’s so annoyed at how many times I’ve knocked out my teeth. She wants me to wear a mouthguard … My dentist is my uncle, and our family always jokes that’s one of the best family-member careers that could have been attached to our family, because I’m losing my teeth all the time.” LOL

Links: An excellent profile of Ertz from Allison Glock for ESPN. Plus her Wikipedia page, U.S. Soccer page, and Twitter.

The 2019 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Friday, June 7 in France. The United States team is the defending champions but their path to repeating is a perilous one. The field is stronger than it ever has been before and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of the top ten teams lifting the trophy on July 7.

To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Crystal Dunn

Position: Defender

Club: NC Courage

Number: 19

National team experience: Dunn has 84 appearances and 24 goals for the national team. This is her first World Cup. During the 2019 SheBelieves Cup, she played two whole games at defense and started one game as a striker, replaced by Carli Lloyd in the 87th minute.

What to expect from Crystal Dunn in 2019:  “Crystal Dunn, Defender” is one of the weirdest parts of this year’s team and yet it explains so much. Crystal Dunn is probably one of the world’s best 20 strikers. In 2015, she led the NWSL in scoring. So far this year, she has four goals in three games for the North Carolina Courage. She’s lightning in a bottle. So, why is she playing defense on the national team? One reason is that being one of the best 20 strikers in the world doesn’t help all that much when the U.S. has five or six of those best 20 and several of them are better than you. The second, and perhaps more meaningful reason is that coach Jill Ellis has spent the past four years tinkering with the idea of playing versatile attacking players in the outside defensive positions instead of defensive ones. This isn’t a radical idea (in fact, it was a formative one for people my age, because it’s how the Brazilian men’s team won the 1994 World Cup in the U.S.) but the extent to Ellis’ commitment to it is striking. Dunn is effective at this hybrid attacking defender role. Despite of (or because of) her height, she’s a tough enough tackler to more than hold up on defense, and having another world class attacker sprinting up the wing when the U.S. has the ball should strike fear in opposing teams. She’s the first choice outside defender for the team and should play most of the time during the World Cup.

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Non-gendered personal interest item:  Dunn was universally considered the “last player cut” from the 2015 World Cup team. That was the year she won the NWSL’s most valuable player award and its Golden Boot for most goals scored, which tells you a little bit about her skill and competitiveness.

Links: Here are her Wikipedia page, U.S. Soccer page, and Twitter. Plus an article about her from Sports Illustrated.

The 2019 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Friday, June 7 in France. The United States team is the defending champions but their path to repeating is a perilous one. The field is stronger than it ever has been before and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of the top ten teams lifting the trophy on July 7.

To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Carli Lloyd

Position: Forward

Club: Sky Blue FC

Number: 10

National team experience: Lloyd has played 274 games for the national team and scored 110 goals. During the 2019 SheBelieves Cup, she came on as a sub in the 85th, 87th, and 88th minutes of the three games.

What I wrote in 2015: Carli Lloyd is one of the most powerful soccer players in the world. From her position in the center of the midfield, (although coach Jill Ellis has experimented with her in an outside midfield role), Lloyd works tirelessly on offense and defense. She is noticeably stronger than almost everyone else in the sport… Lloyd doesn’t have the vision, dribbling, or passing abilities of some of her midfield counterparts, but she more than makes up for it with power and determination. Lloyd should play close to every minute of the World Cup this year.

What to expect from Carli Lloyd in 2019:  What Abby Wambach was to the 2015 World Cup squad, we hope Carli Lloyd will be to this one: a great player well past her prime who provides leadership mostly from the bench. While I have confidence that Lloyd will do everything in her power to support the team, I worry because of her position. Lloyd is a central midfielder. Wambach was a striker. Strikers are kind of like an extremity while the central midfielder is the heart of the team. In the 2015 World Cup, Wambach got into games that were essentially already decided and her team was happy to feed her the ball and try to get her some more international goals. Subbing in a central midfielder is more disruptive, even in games the United States has in hand. Lloyd’s style magnifies that difficulty because she plays so differently from the players most likely to start in her old position this year: Lindsay Horan and Rose Lavelle. Both of those players are playmakers – Lloyd is a scorer. If she can’t get any meaningful playing time, will she be able to lead from the bench? If she disrupts the team when she’s in, will her teammates appreciate her?Lloyd’s belief in her own ability to dominate games is still strong, as is her right. What if she refuses to sit on the bench gracefully? Everything will probably be fine on this front, but I still worry.

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Non-gendered personal interest item: Uh, of interest perhaps only to myself, Lloyd is almost exactly the same age as me and went to the same college as I did for the same four years. So, when I write about her needing to age gracefully and not being sure she’s ready for that, am I being a clear-headed blogger or just projecting…?

Links: Here are her Wikipedia page, U.S. Soccer page, and Twitter.

The 2019 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Friday, June 7 in France. The United States team is the defending champions but their path to repeating is a perilous one. The field is stronger than it ever has been before and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of the top ten teams lifting the trophy on July 7.

To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Becky Sauerbrunn

Position: Defender

Club: Utah Royals FC

Number: 4

National team experience: 157 appearances, this will be her third World Cup. She has zero goals (as one would expect). During the 2019 SheBelieves Cup, Sauerbrunn was getting over a knee injury. She missed the first game, player part of the second, and all of the third. This is not typical.

What I wrote in 2015: Becky Sauerbrunn is a prototypical central defender. She’s strong, physical, and totally reliable. If you’re a midfielder, you feel secure knowing that if you make a mistake, Sauerbrunn is right behind you to clean it up. If you’re a goalie, you know you can count on her to keep the front of your net clear… Sauerbrunn has become the leader of the back line… Barring a major injury, we should expect to see Sauerbrunn on the field for every minute of the World Cup.

What to expect from Becky Sauerbrunn in 2019:  Uh… honestly, nothing has changed from four years ago. Becky Sauerbrunn is still the prototypical central defender. The biggest difference this year is the context Sauerbrunn is playing in. Not only have opponents improved but the U.S. team has spent much of the last four years experimenting with playing converted attackers on either side of the defensive line. Sauerbrunn is being asked to do more than ever at the heart of the team’s defense while her wing backs go shooting up the field. If she can solidify the back line the way she did during the 2015 World Cup, that will go a long way to repeating as champions. .

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Non-gendered personal interest item:  As the wonderful soccer writer, Stephanie Y explains, everyone wants Becky Sauerbrunn to score a goal. There was even a plot among her teammates to give her a penalty kick, but Sauerbrunn classically refused. If she gets a national team goal, she wants to earn it. Hard to imagine there will be many opportunities for the most defensive of defenders to score in the World Cup, but as Stephanie writes in her article, “it would be dope.”

Links: A Equalizer Soccer profile of Sauerbrunn plus her Wikipedia page, U.S. Soccer page, and Twitter.

The 2019 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Friday, June 7 in France. The United States team is the defending champions but their path to repeating is a perilous one. The field is stronger than it ever has been before and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of the top ten teams lifting the trophy on July 7.

To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Allie Long

Position: Midfielder

Club: Reign FC

Number: 20

National team experience: 45 appearances, this will be her first World Cup, she has six goals. During the 2019 SheBelieves Cup, Long wasn’t on the team, but she came on as a sub in each of the last two friendly matches before the World Cup.

What to expect from Allie Long in 2019:  Allie Long is one of those classic bitter sweet USWNT stories. A star player in college and for her club teams, Long has always been just slightly below the best players on the U.S. team at her natural position. For Long, that position is central attacking midfield, a position that Carli Lloyd and Lauren Holliday had a lock on for a solid six years. Now that Holliday has retired and Lloyd is at the end of her fine career, Long finds herself again behind two players at that position, this time younger than herself: Lindsay Horan and Rose Lavelle. Blocked at her natural position, like so many others, Long has had to show positional flexibility to make the team. Coach Jill Ellis has experimented with moving Long straight back into either center back or central defensive midfield. Since Long is a wonderful player, strong, physical, excellent in the air, a technically sound passer, she did just fine in those positions… but not well enough to supplant players who have been playing the for longer and have a more naturally defensive mindset. So now she finds herself blocked for playing time behind Becky Sauerbrunn, Abby Dahlkemper, and Julie Ertz instead of Lindsay Horan and Rose Lavelle. No matter what, the outcome is the same. She’s unlikely to see much playing time in France. If she does get into a few games, expect to see her playing in one of the more defensive positions.

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Non-gendered personal interest item: During the off season, Long plays futsal. Futsal is a version of soccer played either indoor or outdoor on asphalt with smaller teams and a smaller, heavier ball. It emphasizes ball skills and quick feet. In the United States, it’s played mostly by Hispanic soccer players.

Links: Here are her Wikipedia page, U.S. Soccer page, and Twitter as well as two profiles by empireofsoccer.com and ABC News.