BBVA to host two U.S. games
Because the only way to go is down, Vlatko Andonovski’s challenge as coach of the best soccer team in the world is unique.
While other coaches have the luxury of pumping up their players by dangling a never-before-achieved accomplishment in front of them, Andonovski is always on the hunt for ways to motivate his players to do something they’ve already done — in many cases multiple times.
The current task at hand for the coach of the U.S. Women’s National Team is to prepare the squad for this summer’s Olympic Games where it will try to become the first nation to win the Olympic gold medal in the year, or in this case two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, after winning the World Cup.
“The challenge of making the best better is that the room for improvement is a lot smaller, so we have to dig deeper,” said Andonovski, whose squad is No. 1 in the FIFA world rankings. “We have to look for different angles. We have to look for different ways of approaching the way that we're preparing, the way we're going to play to continue to evolve and continue developing.” The Americans’ next chance to do that will be in Houston next month.
U.S. Soccer on Thursday announced that it will host Jamaica, Portugal and Nigeria in the WNT Summer Series from June 10-16 in Texas.
Doubleheaders on June 10 and June 13 will be played at BBVA Stadium. The finale will be played at Austin’s Q2 Stadium on June 16.Andonovski said 24 players will be invited into the national team camp, which will begin June 7. The Summer Series will serve as the final chance for players to impress Andonovski before he makes his final selections for the 18-player Olympic roster, which he expects to announce shortly after the tournament.
“It is very important that we start synchronizing our lines in place that are going to play together or we believe are going to play a majority of the minutes in the Olympics,” he said. “So, we’re going to try to give some of those players a little bit more minutes, but there’ll be players that we’re probably going to have to see for one last time before we announce the roster.”
The USWNT is riding a 39-game unbeaten streak dating back to a 3-1 loss to France in a friendly on Jan. 19, 2019. The Americans had won 16 in a row during that streak before a 1-1 draw against Sweden on April 10.
That draw was the first of two friendlies last month. They bounced back with a 2-0 win over France three days later.
Not beating Sweden likely brought back plenty of nightmares for the players who were on the pitch in the 2016 Olympic quarterfinals when a regulation tie with Sweden followed by a loss in penalty kicks led to the Americans’ only elimination before the semifinals of a major competition.
It’s one of the rare feelings of disappointment the USWNT players have experienced and one that will drive them as they prepare for a chance to make things right this summer.
Andonovski said he is happy with the progress his team made in April and that he is excited to see the next steps it can take in Houston next month.
“I thought that those two games were extremely valuable for us and very good learning opportunities,” he said. “Those are games that we used for different things, for different reasons to try different ideas. They were able to help us grow in different areas of the game. But also at the same time, both of those teams were able to expose some of the things that we will need to be better, or we need to fix.”