Uncertainty is an uncommon feeling for the United States women’s national team. The program has four World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals to its name, each of which is a record. Until August, the US had never been ranked below No 2 in the world and never finished worse than third at a World Cup.
Change arrived quickly, however. A historic exit from the 2023 World Cup in the round of 16 evoked existential questions about the program’s future as other top nations surpassed it. Former head coach Vlatko Andonovski also resigned in the immediate aftermath of the tournament, leaving the US without a coach.
Now, the US women need a head coach to immediately get them back into contention for next year’s Olympics. That coach also needs a development plan to bring the US back to the top at the next World Cup, which could be jointly played on home soil in 2027. No pressure.
Who will that coach be? It’s anyone’s guess. When will the hire be made? Not soon enough. And who will make the decision that will shape the program? One man, for all intents and purposes, who recently took over as US Soccer’s sporting director.
Matt Crocker joined US Soccer earlier this year, arriving from Southampton. Crocker previously served as head of development teams at the English FA and helped establish the “England DNA”, a concept by which all teams wearing the badge play a similar style. He hopes to bring the same approach to US Soccer.
Crocker will lead the charge in finding the next US women’s coach, a process that will ostensibly look like the same one that yielded the rehiring of Gregg Berhalter as the US men’s coach earlier this year. That process on the men’s side included what Crocker called extensive data analysis combined with hours of interviews and tests – mental, tactical, and what else is unclear exactly.
Coaching is coaching, granted, but the women’s game is not a replica of men’s soccer. The coaching networks are different and so is the pool of candidates. Crocker began navigating this process more than a month ago with a list of a dozen or so names and without the assistance of a general manager of the women’s team. That role previously belonged to former US defender Kate Markgraf, who left her position upon the expiration of her contract in August. The general manager role is expected to be dissolved, sources previously confirmed, meaning this hire will be Crocker’s decision – and will report to him. (Andonovski was largely Markgraf’s hire in 2019, although Earnie Stewart oversaw the process as sporting director.)
One of the questions lingering over the process is whether there are enough voices involved who have been around the US women’s program. Markgraf was a connection to that legacy, as is current US Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone. Change is needed, and perhaps an outsider’s view is, too.
Another concern is the amount of time it will take to hire the next coach. Twila Kilgore, an assistant under Andonovski, served as interim coach for a recent pair of victories over South Africa. She will continue in that role later this month for friendlies against Colombia.
The hope is to have a new head coach in place by late November before the final international window of the year, a US Soccer spokesperson told the Guardian. The US women’s team will close out 2023 with two friendlies against China in December.
Jill Ellis, who won the 2015 and 2019 World Cups as the US women’s national team coach, feels like the process needs to move forward with urgency. “It is a critical hire, and it cannot be a long process,” Ellis said. “It needs to be a thorough process but not a long process, because right now there are openings in the club landscape, and there are openings in the world landscape. Top coaches are not going to sit on their hands; they’re going to be recruited.”
Ellis is adamant that the job should pay a seven-figure salary if US Soccer wants the women’s national team coach to continue to be the gold standard in the sport. Historically, the US men’s national team coach has been paid significantly more despite the relative lack of success of the program. Andonovski made roughly one-quarter of what Berhalter was paid in US Soccer’s most recent fiscal year – $446,495 to $1,641,398, including bonuses.
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England coach Sarina Wiegman has (along with her boss) already publicly said she is happy where she is. She is also under contract through 2025. Wiegman is the name most often tossed about as the go-get-her-at-any-cost option, but by all accounts, that is not happening.
Tony Gustavsson is an interesting prospective candidate. He was an assistant to Ellis and, previously, Pia Sundhage when each successfully served as head coach of the US women. Gustavsson was the architect of the US’s potent attack at the 2019 World Cup. This summer, he led Australia to a semi-final berth despite missing star striker Sam Kerr for the entire group stage.
Gustavsson, however, fits into the category of coaches to which Ellis is referring: he is under contact with Australia and needs to commit one way or another with the Olympics looming (not to oversimplify a potential buyout needed from US Soccer to even make that hire). Will Gustavsson or another top candidate weighing multiple options still be available in late November?
More than a handful of teams that played at the 2023 World Cup have parted with their head coaches since the end of the tournament, including winners Spain for entirely different reasons as the federation flounders. The US must hire a coach in a competitive market.
The process could also yield responses to an important question: Is the head coach job of the US women still the be-all-end-all for the profession, or has that changed, too?