Emma Hayes brings brings back joy as US attack thrives in Olympic opener

For U.S. women’s national team coach Emma Hayes, there seemed to be only one obstacle facing her team as they headed to France for the opening match of the Olympic Games: the invisible brick wall erected in front of the goal.

In the two practice games in preparation for the Olympics, Hayes’ team had 43 shots on goal. Only 18 of them were on target and only one resulted in a goal. The team showed in a 1-0 win over Mexico and a 0-0 draw with Costa Rica that they had improved as an attacking unit during Hayes’ first games as manager, but their ability to finish plays was questionable.

“If we keep creating chances in the right areas, keep getting numbers in the box, keep getting as much possession as possible in that area, then the goals will come. I’m sure of that,” Hayes said at the time.

For now, she’s been proven right. The U.S. began its 2024 Olympic journey with a bang on Thursday, when Mallory Swanson led the team to a 3-0 victory over Zambia for 70 seconds in the first half.

The uptick in finishing is a promising sign, but perhaps more importantly, the optimistic attitude Hayes said he wanted to instill seems to have taken root during the team’s difficult run in front of goal. The players rarely hung their heads after the missed chances that marked the opening stages against Zambia, and attacking moves never lost their purpose, even after a flurry of first-half goals.

“It’s huge,” captain Lindsey Horan told NBC after the match. “Players have been in big tournaments before and we know confidence is key. So if we start like this, it will propel us into the next match.”

The USWNT had 27 shots, eight of them on target, against Zambia while maintaining 78% of the ball possession. A red card in the 34th minute for Zambia defender Pauline Zulu certainly made the Copper Queens’ task more difficult, but it did not significantly affect the flow of the match. The U.S. generally appeared to be back in the dominant form that has made them feared for generations in women’s international football. They also drew level with Group B opponents Germany, who defeated Australia 3-0 earlier on Thursday.

To Hayes’ delight, the US did this while demonstrating many of the key tactical concepts she had relied on throughout her career.

The US’s first scoring chance, which came just 30 seconds into the game, showed one of those characteristics: full-backs with the freedom to move upfield and link up with wingers in attack. This time it was right back Emily Fox who dribbled cleanly through the Zambian defensive line and laid a lovely ball across goal for Horan, whose effort went just wide of the near post.

The right flank continued to be a source of American joy, giving Sophia Smith a chance that was saved by Zambia goalkeeper Ngambo Musole. Fox continued to make dangerous runs, and right winger Trinity Rodman had a high effort off her own bounce off the top of the bar. The U.S. could easily have been 3-0 up after 10 minutes, 4-0 after 15, and 5-0 after 16.

At that point, it would have been easy to point to the absence of Alex Morgan, who has scored 123 goals for the USWNT but was left off the Olympic roster by Hayes. The thinking is that she could have scored one of those many chances anyway.

Hayes explained that Morgan had been left out because other players were more versatile, and the United States’ run of goals was ample proof of the concept. The opening goal in the 17th minute came when Smith, nominally the striker in the attacking trio, had moved down the left flank, where she collected a loose ball and made a direct run before passing to Horan on the edge of the box. Horan then found Rodman, who had moved to the penalty spot from the right, and whose silky first touch on the turn took three Zambia defenders out of the equation before finishing neatly into the top corner.

Hayes’ Chelsea teams valued possession with purpose, usually playing more of the ball while also finding opportunities to play directly and get in behind the opposition’s defensive lines. That concept carried over to the U.S. for the team’s second goal, which came after a long series of probing possession. When the ball found Horan in space 40 yards from goal, Swanson made a swift diagonal run with the confidence of someone who knew the ball would come. Horan found Swanson beautifully with the outside of his foot and a deft finish from the Chicago Red Stars striker doubled the U.S. advantage

Seventy seconds later, Swanson scored her second, capitalizing on a Zambian error at kickoff to level the score with just over an hour to play: a stunning return to a major international tournament for a player who missed the 2023 World Cup with a torn patellar tendon.

There were, of course, some concerns. Each of the United States’ attacking forays was punctuated by Zambian counterattacks, including many solo efforts by Barbra Banda that the American defense, particularly Naomi Girma and Tierna Davidson, had to work hard to break down. There were some nerve-wracking moments as Banda pressed the American defenders on the rare occasions when they played from the back.

“Our team knows that there is still a lot of room for improvement [to be made],” Rodman told NBC afterward. “There should have been more goals, the execution should have been better and we should have controlled the game in a lot of areas where we were forced a couple of times.”

And then there were the slowly mounting injuries; Smith left the game in the first half with an ankle injury. Midfielder Jaedyn Shaw missed the game entirely after suffering an injury in training the day before. Rose Lavelle lasted just 45 minutes before being replaced by Korbin Albert.

However, Hayes never lost confidence and an important match against Germany awaits him on Sunday.