England may have lost two of their three games in the tournament, but to beat the world champions and more than match France and Germany shows a team evolving well under their canny coach Mark SampsonEngland return from America’s east coast and the SheBelieves Cup with room for improvement but reason for cautious optimism ahead of this summer’s European Championships in the Netherlands.If the euphoria of beating the USA, the world champions, was tempered by narrow defeats to France and Germany, the England full-back, Demi Stokes, reflected that “something special’s happening with this team”. Related: Germany’s Anja Mittag downs England to end SheBelieves Cup hopes Related: Alex Morgan: ‘If Fifa start respecting the women’s game more, others will follow’ |...
Disputes over pay mean that the NWSL is struggling to keep hold of top international talentOn the field, the US women’s soccer team has followed up a thrilling NWSL final with a couple of smashing debuts in friendlies against Switzerland. Off the field, the sport is bogged down in the courts and at the negotiating table.The talent pipeline is still intact, a fact US coach Jill Ellis celebrated by calling in a staggering 11 uncapped players for camp. Lynn Williams, fresh from winning the NWSL Golden Boot and posting clutch performances to lift Western New York to the league title, scored just 49 seconds into her debut on 19 October. That was a new record for the fastest debut goal...
In When Nobody Was Watching, the World Cup winner paints a portrait of a player who has given perhaps too much in the pursuit of successWhen the US women’s soccer team rose to fame in the late 1990s, they projected an image that was a well-polished composite of fun, friendship and teamwork in the pursuit of excellence.Two new memoirs, Carli Lloyd’s When Nobody Was Watching and Abby Wambach’s Forward, shatter that perception. But they do so in a way that should open a more realistic discussion on what we expect from athletes, especially but not limited to female athletes, and what they should expect from themselves. Related: Megan Rapinoe kneels again as US Soccer says: we expect players to stand...