USWNT Year In Review: Emma Hayes leads USA to gold, but loses several star players

It’s been an epic year for the U.S. women’s national team.

They were Concacaf W Gold Cup champions, SheBelieves Cup champions and Olympic champions. Emma Hayes took over as the new manager and made an immediate and powerful impact. The “Triple Espresso” emerged and legends retired. Alex Morgan, Alyssa Naeher and Kelley O’Hara — who have been pillars of the program for more than a decade — all announced the end of their respective careers. And with those departures, younger and less experienced players have earned opportunities to fill their shoes. 

A little more than a year ago, the USWNT appeared to be in a state of disarray following a disastrously early exit from the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. When U.S. Soccer Sporting Director Matt Crocker began the process of looking for a new head coach, he used the term “serial winner” to describe his ideal candidate. That’s exactly what he has in Hayes, who was hired last November, but did not take over the team fully until this past May. Since then, the USWNT has gone 13-0-2 and won Olympic gold. They’re back on top of the FIFA world rankings, too, after dropping several spots following the World Cup.

After the Olympics, Emily Sonnett joked with Hayes that she started her U.S. tenure off too strong. That’s a fair statement given everything the team achieved this calendar year, but players are keeping it in perspective and believe it’s actually just the start of something as this next cycle begins.

“I think we’ve made such huge strides in such a short amount of time,” Rose Lavelle said earlier this year. “So I’m excited to see how we build on this. I think it’s gonna be fun times ahead.”

With that, here’s how 2024 went down for the USWNT, and what’s to come in 2025 and beyond:

Emma Hayes takes over

Hayes officially took over the USWNT two months before the Olympics. Her first training camp was all about getting to know the players, establishing relationships and layering in her principles. She compared her role at that time to that of a “heart surgeon in the middle of emergency surgery.” Not because the team was in crisis, per se, but because it was difficult to simultaneously teach her concepts and conduct “surgery” with such limited time before the Games began.

After six months on the job, she doesn’t feel that way anymore.

“I’m on the wards, I’m on the clinics,” Hayes joked recently. “The best way to put it is, it’s functioning, it’s high level. I think everybody understands the ethos. I think it will become even clearer once we deliver the [USWNT] strategy in January. I think that’s when we can go into another level and each and every department can really grow into their roles with even more clarity on what our objectives are for the WNT.

“But like, it’s a lovely hospital. People are really good and the patients are behaving really well so all around generally a good start.”

USA wins Olympic gold

The USWNT won gold at the Olympics for the first time since 2012 when it beat Brazil 1-0 thanks to a tremendous goal by Mallory Swanson and some massive saves by Naeher.

The final was only Hayes’ 10th game in charge, but she was able to rally the team and quickly implement her style and tactics. She made tough decisions, like leaving Morgan off the 18-player roster. She also ignored critics who thought she should make more changes to her starting lineups throughout the tournament.

Paris was also where the “Triple Espresso” was born. The USWNT’s dynamic forward trio of Swanson, Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman combined to score 10 of 12 total goals for the U.S., and each scored a game-winner in the knockout stage. They also combined for five assists, showcasing what the future of the U.S. attack will look like under Hayes. All three players were nominated for the Ballon d’Or Feminin as well. 

The defense, anchored by Naomi Girma, was stalwart throughout the Games, while Naeher etched her iconic status further into the USWNT history books. She became the first goalkeeper in women’s soccer history to record clean sheets in both the World Cup (2019) and Olympic (2024) final. She also made several jaw-dropping saves, like when the tip of her cleat saved a game-tying goal in extra time of the semifinal, and this one in the final moments of the final.

Superstars retire

Morgan shocked the world in September when she posted a video on social media announcing her immediate retirement and that she was pregnant with her second child.

While Morgan’s decision to hang up her boots was not a total surprise, it happened quickly. The 35-year-old striker made her announcement on a Thursday and played in her final match with the San Diego Wave the following Sunday. It was an emotional moment, but Morgan expressed clarity in her decision. She will undoubtedly go down as one of the greatest players of all time.

Nearly three months later, Naeher retired from the international game. The 36-year-old goalkeeper, who Hayes considers to be the “greatest goalkeeper this country’s ever had,” played her last game on Dec. 3 in a 2-1 victory over the Netherlands. In true Naeher fashion, her final match included plenty of heroic saves — the Dutch had 22 shots to the Americans’ five. 

Naeher’s retirement presents a challenge for Hayes, as there’s currently No. 2 clear No. 2 goalkeeper. It was initially thought to be Casey Murphy, who backed Naeher up at the Olympics and has 20 caps, but she was not on the latest roster. Murphy could still be the leading candidate – perhaps Hayes simply wanted to see some new faces in this camp because she already knows what Murphy can do and called up Mandy Haught and Phallon Tullis-Joyce instead. Regardless, there will be plenty of competition over the next two years.

“There’s a big hole, but there’s also a big opportunity for the likes of anyone that’s within that pool,” Hayes said. “I think we’ll probably have to go through a period to determine who that No. 1 will be, probably over the course of the next year. I will have to give players experiences because they don’t have them.”

Broadening the player pool

One of the things Hayes said when she first came into the team was that she was “pleasantly surprised” with the depth of the player pool. Now that she’s more settled in her job, Hayes wants to broaden it by giving younger and less experienced players more opportunities. 

That’s exactly what she’s been doing these last several months – 11 players have earned their first caps since she took over. And that development will be critically important as the team looks forward to the 2027 World Cup.

Hayes spoke on the topic following the USWNT’s final two matches of the year against England and the Netherlands:

“The minute you start chopping and changing the team, the harder it is for you to carry out what you want,” Hayes said. “But I want to see the players. I don’t want to sit there and just say, ‘Well I’m going to put all my experienced players on, develop the connections and the combinations for that now.’

“[If I do that] I don’t get to see an Ally Sentnor or a Hal Hershfelt or an Alyssa Thompson or a Yazmeen Ryan, etc. I want to see where they really are at this level to know once we get into the New Year and into SheBelieves, what will be our core group going forward. And I owe it to the entire playing pool to look at everyone.”

All eyes on 2027 

After a much-needed break over the holidays, the USWNT will reconvene in January for a “Futures Camp,” designed to identify up-and-coming talent, which will run concurrently with the senior team’s camp in Los Angeles. That will also be the time when Hayes and her staff present their 2027-28 strategy.

Everything this team does moving forward will be with an eye on winning the next World Cup, which will take place in Brazil in 2027. Hayes will continue developing the player pool and expose young ones to the USWNT environment, which will create more competition. She also plans to sync things up with the U-20 and U-23 programs so that when those players eventually make the transition to the senior team, the jump is not so daunting.

Hayes’ introduction to the team had to be accelerated – she completed her season with Chelsea, hopped straight into USWNT camp and by then, the Olympics were eight weeks away. Now that a chaotic, albeit successful, 2024 is coming to a close, the squad has time to refocus and take a beat before the next major tournament in 2027.

“It’s going to be [two] very important years to keep building and to put ourselves in the best position to have success in the World Cup,” Smith said in October. “I think it’s setting small goals, it’s building as a team. 

“And Emma, I mean we won a gold with her, but it’s still very new. We still haven’t had a lot of time. So just continuing to work on that and developing ourselves into a team that can compete to win a World Cup.”

Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. She previously wrote for Sports Illustrated, USA Today and The Indianapolis Star. She is the author of “Strong Like a Woman,” published in spring 2022 to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Follow her at @LakenLitman.

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