Here are two things I thought I felt quite strongly about just a few days ago:
(1) The U.S. women's national team wasn't as bad as everyone thought at last year's World Cup. (2) International managers don't manage as much as everyone thinks.
Two games into the 2024 Olympics, I don't really know what to believe anymore.
First, the USWNT dominated Zambia 3-0. And although that team includes two of the best players on the planet in Barbra Banda and Racheal Kundananji, it's still Zambia, the 64th-ranked team in the world. Plus, after a 34th-minute red card, the U.S. played two-thirds of the match with an 11-10 advantage. There were plenty of reasons not to get too excited about the progress -- until the Americans obliterated Germany on Sunday: a 4-1 win against the fourth-ranked team in the world, and no red-card-related reasons to write anything off.
Two games into Emma Hayes' first tournament at the helm of the USWNT, the Americans already look as if they might be back to being the dominant team in world soccer. At the very least, per ESPN BET, they're the favorites to take gold -- ahead of the current world champion, Spain.
But it's not just that the Americans are playing better than they did a year ago, when the USWNT suffered its worst finish at a World Cup. It's that a very similar roster of players suddenly looks totally different. What has changed about the way the U.S. is playing, and why is it playing so much better under Hayes than it was previously?