SheBelieves Cup review: Mallory Swanson dominates, USWNT win with finishing, more

Treated like a tournament group stage, the United States women's national team maneuvered through the 2023 SheBelieves Cup with little issue. They were better at the finish than the start, coach Vlatko Andonovski played lots of players (22 saw the field, with 19 of them playing at least 45 minutes), and the U.S. went a perfect 3-0-0, beating three teams in the top 11 of the FIFA rankings. As far as preparation goes for the real group stage -- that of this summer's Women's World Cup -- this was pretty good.

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Held to the exacting standards of this team's history, though, there were still plenty of flaws and question marks. The world is getting better at women's soccer, and the U.S. isn't dominating as much as it did only a few short years ago. Here are some takeaways from SheBelieves 2023 and where things stand heading toward this summer's big tournament.

MVP: Mallory Swanson

It's so hard for Next Big Things to not only live up to hype, but to exceed it. Mina Kimes profiled Mallory Swanson (formerly Mallory Pugh) for ESPN the Magazine before the 2019 World Cup, when she had already racked up over 50 caps for the U.S. before her 21st birthday. She played sparingly then -- 118 minutes, primarily in group stage mop-up duty -- and produced a goal and an assist, but simply having broken into a loaded attacking rotation at such a young age was a sign that heavier expectations were on the way. And damned if she hasn't met the moment.

Following a three-match, four-goal performance at the SheBelieves Cup, Swanson's up to eight goals (with 14 chances created for teammates, no less) in her past six matches in a national team shirt. She's up to 87 caps and 32 goals (14 since the start of 2022) and she still won't turn 25 until April.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about her showing in this tournament? Each of her four goals was completely different. In the 2-0 win over Canada, she scored with a pinpoint strike in a crowded box, then put the match away by pouncing on a poor pass in buildup play. In the 2-1 finale against Brazil, she put away a transition goal from a tough angle on the right. In between, in by far the toughest match of the bunch against Japan, she assured victory with an old-school, one-woman breakaway in counterattack.

Counter attacking ✨magic✨ from the #USWNT as Mallory Swanson puts the US ahead of Japan!

📺: @NBCUniverso & @peacock for Spanish Coverage#SheBelievesCup pic.twitter.com/dtDd97wyaO

— NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) February 19, 2023

Swanson does whatever the moment requires, and for as good as she clearly already was, her improvement of late has been startling. Some stats:

• 2021 NWSL season: 25 matches, five goals, four assists (50 chances), 3.1 shots per 90 minutes, 0.54 xG+xA per 90 minutes

• Feb. 2020 to Feb. 2022 for USWNT: 8 matches, three goals, five assists (24 chances), 2.8 shots per 90 minutes, 0.88 xG+xA per 90 minutes

• 2022 NWSL season: 17 matches, 11 goals, six assists (38 chances), 4.3 shots per 90 minutes, 0.82 xG+xA per 90 minutes

• Last year for USWNT: 18 matches, 13 goals, seven assists (49 chances), 3.6 shots per 90 minutes, 1.16 xG+xA per 90 minutes

England's Lauren James is starting to do scary things for both Chelsea and her national team. Bunny Shaw, of both Jamaica and Manchester City, has been the best attacker in the Women's Super League this season. Players like Wolfsburg's Ewa Pajor and Barcelona's Mariona Aldentey are lighting up the Women's Champions League too, but you can make a pretty solid case that Swanson is the best and most in-form attacker in the world at the moment.

That's a good thing to have when you're heading toward the biggest tournament in the world.

The U.S. won with finishing

This was a good week for the U.S. if only because they beat a series of good teams. That had become more difficult for them of late. Canada, Japan and Brazil all rank among the top 11 (top 10, not including the U.S.) in FIFA's world rankings, and the U.S. went three-for-three; over their previous five matches against such teams, they had won twice (against Canada and Germany) and lost three times (to England, Spain and Germany). Wins of any kind can be cleansing, and the U.S. needed a confidence boost of sorts.

Really, the only primary difference between the Americans' performance over the past couple of weeks and that of 2022 was that they finished their chances. They didn't create as many overall, however.

• U.S. attack, last year vs. top 10 teams: 1.0 goals per match, 1.6 xG per match, 0.14 shots per possession, 0.12 xG per shot

• U.S. attack, 2023 SheBelieves Cup: 1.7 goals per match, 1.6 xG per match, 0.13 shots per possession, 0.12 xG per shot

The underlying basics were almost identical. But their shots went in this time. And by "their," I mean "Swanson's."

• Swanson: 4 goals from seven shots worth 1.8 xG

• Everyone else: 1 goal from 31 shots worth 2.9 xG 1 goal from 31 shots worth 2.9 xG

In their four matches against England, Spain and Germany last fall, the U.S. scored just four goals from 53 shots worth 5.1 xG. Sophia Smith was the silver bullet then -- she scored two goals from shots worth just 0.6 xG -- but the rest of the team, including Swanson to a degree (1.6 xG, 1 goal), just couldn't get the ball in the net.

Finishing was an issue in those matches, but pure shot quality was, too. While the overall xG-per-shot averages were decent, only eight of 53 shots in those four fall matches (15%) were worth even 0.15 xG. In the SheBelieves Cup, 11 of 38 shots (29%) were at 0.15 xG or higher. They scored on their three best opportunities of the tournament (all from Swanson), then nabbed two goals from lesser opportunities.

There are lots of ways to average 0.12 xG per shot, but particularly big chances matter, and the U.S. won this tournament by creating the most of them.

Shots worth at least 0.15 xG, SheBelieves Cup:

• United States: 11 attempted, two allowed (+9)

• Japan: 10 attempted, five allowed (+5)

• Brazil: six attempted, 11 allowed (-5)

• Canada: four attempted, 13 allowed (-9)

Less brute force, more modernity ... less success?

There was an extremely telling passage in the ESPN the Magazine piece on Swanson above:

"What you're seeing across Europe is that the federations are pouring resources into the women's game," [former USWNT coach Anson] Dorrance says. "It's putting these countries on much better footing, because the advantage they've always had is soccer marinates their entire culture."

[Swanson] agrees. "The rest of the world is catching up," she says. She was impressed earlier this year, she adds, when the USWNT played Spain, a team that has never advanced out of the group stage in the World Cup but has recently dominated at the youth levels. Across Europe, clubs like Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain are pouring money into their women's organizations, which nurture the young players who will eventually compete on national squads.

That was written four years ago, and the world has indeed begun to catch up. Barcelona's technical dominance in recent Champions Leagues has been revelatory, the level of quality in last summer's Women's Euros was obvious, and that impression was backed up when three of the best teams from that tournament, including Spain, turned around and beat the U.S. last fall.

Even as recently as the 2019 World Cup, the U.S. was able to win with pure brute force as much as anything. Comparing some of their raw averages from that World Cup (minus the 13-0 win over Thailand, which skewed all averages) to what they produced at the SheBelieves Cup this month is a pretty telling exercise.

At the SheBelieves Cup, the USWNT had...

- More touches per match (699.7 to 636.3)
- More pass attempts (495.0 to 433.8) and a higher completion percentage (82% to 76%)
- More sequences per match with 9 or more passes (13.7 to 10.5), fewer sequences with 0-2 passes (89.7 to 109.7), longer average possessions (22.4 seconds to 19.8) and more passes per possession (5.2 to 4.2)
- Lower direct speed* (1.30 to 1.56)

They also had...

- Fewer shot attempts (12.7 to 14.8), fewer shots on goal (5.0 to 6.2) and fewer touches in the attacking third (156.7 to 191.9)
- More shot attempts blocked (3.7 to 2.0)
- Far fewer aerial attempts in both the attacking third (3.3 to 8.5) and middle third (7.0 to 23.7)
- Fewer cross attempts (13.7 to 16.0)
- Fewer progressive carries (43.3 to 58.2)
- Far fewer possessions starting outside the defensive third (43.0 vs. 67.4)

*Direct speed: the average distance, in meters per second, that a team pushes the ball upfield in a given sequence.

Under Ellis, the U.S. used basic tactics -- vertical passing, aggressive dribbling, lots of crosses, lots of headers, lots of pressure (especially in the midfield) -- to maximize their physical superiority. It worked, obviously, but knowing that said physical and technical superiority will be diminishing moving forward as the rest of the world catches up, part of Andonovski's task in recent years has been to modernize American tactics to account for that.