US team starts building process towards Cup, Olympics
Jill Ellis has a philosophy similar to most successful coaches. The present and the future are what matter most.
So when the U.S. women’s national team coach was reminded on Wednesday that Mapfre Stadium was the site of the team’s first rebound win — 9-0 over Thailand — a month after losing in the 2016 Olympics, she smiled.
“You’ve got a good memory, man” she said. “I’ve moved on.”
But she and her team have come full circle in a way, because the U.S., No. 1 in the world rankings, is poised to take on No. 2 Germany at 7 p.m. Thursday at Mapfre Stadium in the first round of the SheBelieves Cup. The game will be televised on ESPN2.
No. 3 England and No. 6 France meet at 4 p.m. in the first stop of a round-robin tournament over the next week that will take the teams to Harrison, New Jersey, for round two, and Orlando, Florida, for round three.
“Outside of FIFAsponsored events, this is probably the premier tournament in the world, to have this caliber of teams here,” Ellis said before putting the U.S. through a workout at the stadium. “So I think it’s a great opportunity for our players to compete against the best.”
That’s why there’s little time for retrospective.
“For us coaches and certainly as players, it’s about being in the moment,” Ellis said.
National teams’ rosters run in fouryear cycles centered on preparation for the World Cup, such as the next one in 2019, and the Olympics, in 2020. That win over Thailand in an exhibition in September 2016 came at the end of a cycle, and was more about the end of something than about finding solid footing after what happened in Brazil the month before.
“Obviously coming off a very disappointing Olympics, it was also
(respected long-time team member) Heather Reilly’s last game,” veteran forward Megan Rapinoe said.
And there was something else. Rapinoe took a knee during the national anthem that night to join athletes who were trying to draw attention to what they saw as injustices going on throughout the country.
“So there was a lot of emotion that went into (that game), a lot of up and down,” Rapinoe said. “It was kind of a meaningless game that had tons of meaning in it.”
Now the return to Mapfre marks the beginning of true competition for a U.S. team that still has several major veterans, including Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and Kelley O’Hara, mixed in with a younger group that has been brought on board since 2016. Last year was all about Ellis and other team coaches and administrators sorting through the roster.
The game with Germany, Rapinoe said, is about getting on with the serious run toward World Cup qualifying later this year and onward.
“The sort of transition period or whatever is very clearly over,” Rapinoe said. “Now it’s time to start putting results and performances together.”
Morgan agreed, pointing to the preparation the team put in the past week to understand the new-look German team, with its spread-thefield approach and other nuances.
“Obviously this is an important tournament for us,” Morgan said. “So we’re taking each team just one step at a time.”