USA TODAY International Edition
Appreciate this US women’s team while we can
Nancy Armour: Sooner or later, playing time will run out, but USA’s depth chart stacked for the future.
LYON, France – Appreciate the U.S. women while you can.
Much of the team will be back for the Tokyo Olympics. They’re only a year away, and there’s some unfinished business after they left the Rio Games empty-handed.
After that, though, the departures will begin.
Carli Lloyd will be 37 this month. Becky Sauerbrunn turned 34 the day before the World Cup began, and Megan Rapinoe joins her Friday. Tack another four years on, and they’ll be soccer’s equivalent of senior citizens.
Tobin Heath is 31, and Christen Press and Alex Morgan are 30.
“I feel like I am on my way up still,” Morgan, who is the co-leader of the tournament with six goals, said before the World Cup began.
Sure, some players have played into their late 30s, even their early 40s. Formiga not only made Brazil’s World Cup roster at 41 this year, she started for the Selecao. Christie Rampone made her fifth World Cup team at 40, even if she only played sparingly in 2015.
But Lloyd was already relegated to reserve status this tournament and has said she thinks this will be her last World Cup.
As for the others, the U.S. has enough depth that it doesn’t need to rely on aging players.
Not as starters, anyway.
“I know my ability and my work ethic and the many things that I bring to the team, the intangibles, I can be playing out there. There’s no doubt,” Lloyd said Wednesday. “But for whatever reason, the coaches have made that decision and I come in and it’s my job to make something happen.
“I feel that I am in my prime,” Lloyd added. “I feel the fittest I’ve felt. I feel I can continue to contribute.
“I’m going to keep going for as long as I can. As long as in my heart I feel I
continue to love it and want to get up every day and work really hard.”
As tough or awkward as this transition is, it’s hardly unique to soccer. No athlete, regardless of how gifted, can outrun, or out-train, biology. Speed fades with age. Reaction times slow. It takes longer to recover.
At some point, they cease being an asset and become a liability. Will it be next year? Four years?
No one can say for sure, and the athlete is sometimes the last to recognize that it’s happened. So it’s a harsh reality that teams need to anticipate and plan for this, and not let sentimentality cloud their thinking.
Abby Wambach is one of the best the U.S. has ever had, and she holds the record for international goals scored by any player, male or female. Yet even she found herself on the bench four years ago, injuries and age having taken their toll on her.
Wambach, now 39, started three of the first four games but was on the bench for the last three, not coming in until the last 10 minutes.
“I’m not upset,” Wambach said at the time. “I accept my role.”
The beauty of the Americans is that no matter how irreplaceable someone is, there is always someone who can replace her.
Odds are, she’s already on the roster. Five of the USA’s 23 players in this World Cup are 25 or younger, including Mallory Pugh and Lindsey Horan. Sam Mewis and two others are 26. Even Julie Ertz is only 27. “They’re new to the World Cup, but they’re not young players,” Rapinoe said when asked, specifically, about Rose Lavelle, Mewis and Horan. “How they’ve reacted throughout the tournament, how they’ve grown within the tournament, how they’ve learned each game, all of them so eager to learn and be the biggest players that they can be for the team, is really cool.
“You do kind of see right before your very eyes the next generation, sweeping it up. Which is amazing,” Rapinoe added. “They’re filling the shoes we need them to, and more so.”
Time eventually takes its toll on everyone. Even the U.S. women.