Aly Wagner: USWNT Was Showing 'New Evolution' Before Shutdown

The ex-USWNT player and current Fox Sports commentator gives her thoughts on how the pandemic has impacted the team's progress.

The U.S. women's national team was bracing for a big few months after winning the SheBelieves Cup in March, with momentum–in the court of public opinion, anyway–on its side in its lawsuit vs. U.S. Soccer and the Olympics on the horizon. But the coronavirus pandemic has put a temporary hold on everything. The trial date in the gender discrimination case has been pushed from May 5 to June 16, and the Olympics have been postponed by a year.

On Sports Illustrated's Coronavirus + Sports Podcast, former U.S. women's national team standout and current Fox Sports commentator Wagner joined Luis Miguel Echegaray to discuss the impact the shutdown has had on the USWNT, both on and off the field.

As it relates to the product on the field, Wagner indicated that she saw an evolved and improved U.S. side taking form. Vlatko Andonovski replaced Jill Ellis as head coach in the fall, and in limited time–a pair of friendlies, Concacaf's Olympic qualifying tournament and the SheBelieves Cup–he already had put a variation on the theme that was successful to the tune of two straight Women's World Cup titles.

"Things started to look different I would say immediately," Wagner said. "Even though he paid a lot of homage to the previous manager ... in saying that things weren't going to look that different, I think you started to see kind of the new evolution, the new vision of what he wanted the team to get into heading into the Olympics.

"You look at qualification," Wagner continued. "They rolled through that. They steamrolled through that, that was easy. But then when you got into these SheBelieves cup games, the quality of the opponent went up dramatically, So you started to see what was working, what wasn't working. 

Wagner said that "defensive clarity" and more defensive responsibility for the wingers were hallmarks of the new-look side, which is still out to press and unsettle teams but also establish more control when it isn't in an all-out attack mode.

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As it relates to the Olympics, Wagner felt the U.S. was "really well-positioned" to become the first team to follow a Women's World Cup title with Olympic gold the following year. The delay doesn't necessarily change that.

"I don't think their momentum will be stopped by this," Wagner said. "There are a couple key pieces to that. One is Alex Morgan, now she has a year to get back from having a baby if she so chooses to try to make that Olympic (roster) spot. She'll provide more depth at the 9 spot if in fact she can return to form. That's a bonus. 

"With Vlatko getting another year–and a year is maybe generous, because we don't know how long we're going to be in these shelter-in-place situations where we can't get out and train and compete–the longer he has as the manager of this team, I think the better off they're going to be able to implement his vision. And I do think he's a premier coach that can take this team to that next level and really get them ready to push the game forward and be more unpredictable as they head into the Olympics."

Wagner conceded that some of the other younger teams in the world, like host Japan and Women's World Cup runner-up Netherlands, could also benefit from the extra preparation time.

Finally, in regards to the ongoing legal battle, Wagner saw both sides of the coin. On one hand, there was momentum building for the players, with the federation's unseemly and belittling legal strategy backfiring and ultimately resulting in the resignation of president Carlos Cordeiro. On the other, perhaps the extra time before a trial can be spent agreeing on a settlement, which new U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone and CEO Will Wilson indicated is a priority.

"There's a ton of momentum that was generating up around this group of players," said Wagner, who played for the USWNT from 1998-2008 and won Olympic gold in 2004 and 2008. "I do think they lose a bit of that, but I also think: what is the team's goal? It's to get this resolved, to get the respect and to get to a level that they feel comfortable with. This almost gives the federation an amount of time to maybe get together and come up with a resolution that works for both parties."