EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — There are no failures in sports, let alone life, but Sunday was about as close as it gets. United States The women's team may receive a retake.
Three days after 2-1 loss for Portugal In their dullest performance in 18 months under head coach Emma Hayes, the Americans won the rematch at Pratt & Whitney Stadium. 3-1. The circumstances of each game were also eerily similar, with a USWNT goal in the first minute followed by an upset that tested the Americans' mettle.
The stakes were also relatively high on Sunday, at least for a friendly. The USWNT has never lost four games in a calendar year – entering Thursday it had three in 2025 – and another poor result could raise deeper questions about the trajectory of Hayes' rebuilding project.
The rematch, however, was marked by the fact that the much younger and less experienced United States team controlled the game as a collective rather than in isolation and “islanded” as they did in Thursday's loss.
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“I think we responded well to [getting scored against]“We continued to play, continued to show our principles, showed an element of control that I thought was missing in the last game,” Hayes said after the match. “Overall the game was much better.”
Hayes made eight changes to the squad on Sunday and gave three teenagers a potential glimpse into the team's immediate future as it heads towards 2027. Women's World Cup. Midfield trio Lili Johannes, Claire Hutton And Saw — all 20 years of age or younger — led the effort to gain better control of the ball, and the USWNT generally remained more compact without it, leading to the Americans “dominating the game in the way I expect and require,” according to Hayes.
On Friday, Hayes and her staff sent video clips for players to study and held small group meetings Saturday morning to discuss what needed to change. Players came with detailed notes and questions.
“The demand for knowledge is incredible,” Hayes said.
In the limited time they had, the Americans focused on “back to basics”—small pictures, big repetitions, and hundreds of passes to build connections.
The results weren't perfect – especially conceding another goal in the air after some terrible defensive set pieces on Thursday – but as a defender Avery Patterson said, “It was a night and day performance” compared to Thursday's loss. Patterson was one of three players left on the roster between games.
Olivia Moultriewho just turned 20, scored twice in his first 10 minutes for Team USA. She helped set up her goal in the first minute and then took advantage of Shaw's deft backheel into the Portugal penalty area.
The heel for the second goal, as well as Johannes' frequent ability to find gaps in the Portuguese midfield and change the point of attack, created a more cohesive USWNT game. The United States swung the ball back into their favor on Sunday after conceding more possession to Portugal three days earlier. Sunday's game was more like the kind of performance the United States is famous for and the kind of performance that has been the norm under Hayes, who took over last year with just four games to prepare for the Olympics and led the team to a gold medal.
For a team that talks about “the USA way,” it was a step back in the right direction after going wild on Thursday.
“The unity in our uniforms, the shorter connections, the ability to play and just find each other without feeling like we're scattered or scattered,” Moultrie said, describing what that identity looks like and how it played out Thursday. “I think being able to break down defenses in multiple ways is something we're always working on, in different shapes and rotations and things like that.”
Hayes, who is always mindful of the need to reset prevailing narratives, said Sunday that “sometimes … we compound the losses, we catastrophize them both externally and internally.” She also reiterated that the team had four months between international windows and communication between players had broken down.
But the same could be said for Portugal, who looked reasonably organized on Thursday after not playing together since failing to win a game at Euro 2025 in July. So no, Thursday's surprise loss wasn't a disaster, but it did expose some weaknesses for the USWNT, which is still in the middle of a generational transition.
Perhaps the most encouraging thing about Sunday's response was that it came from a group that, with the exception of the captain, Emily Sonnetthad 100 caps and an average age of less than 21 years.
Moultrie, Ellie Centnor And Alyssa Thompson headed the line. Jordyn BuggThe 19-year-old player was quite a solid partner for Sonnett in the center.
As Hayes noted on Sunday, it would be wrong to look at progress solely through the prism of comparing these two games against Portugal. Sunday's starting group, devoid of almost all the veterans of the previous generation, consisted of players with whom Hayes only began experimenting with the senior team earlier this year.
Hayes wanted to see how much they had improved compared to losses earlier this year to fellow world powers Brazil and Japan. In a similar two-game set against Brazil in April, the USWNT won the first game before an even less experienced squad was physically overpowered by Brazil and conceded a stoppage-time winner after – you guessed it – scoring in the first minute to lose 2-1.
Patterson, Hutton and Johannes were the three regular starters between the defeat to Brazil and Sunday's win over Portugal. Putting aside the difference in quality between the two opponents, these are the two criteria by which Hayes measures progress.
“Six months later, it was a big step,” she said. “Positionally, tactically, technically, physically, I thought it was a higher level, so for me it ticks the box. But that's just how it is. You can’t cut corners on the path to success, and you can’t cut corners on development.”
Hayes and her team hope Thursday's defeat to Portugal is the first lesson in a World Cup cycle that will bear fruit in the summer of 2027 when the team attempts to win a fifth title. Every team suffers from these harsh realities, and it won't be the last for this young group before the 2027 World Cup.
The teams that won the 2015 and 2019 World Cups experienced moments of potential panic, including terrible losses to France in both cycles and in some unsuccessful forms during the experimental stages.
How Sam Coffey said on Sunday, moments after the USWNT scored the third goal: “Thursday was well below our standards. I think in some strange way we needed him.”
They won't know for sure until two years from now, but the most important thing about Sunday is that they responded.
