Can USWNT qualify for World Cup, Olympics? Top questions ahead of CONCACAF W Championship

For the U.S. women’s national team, all roads to the 2023 Women’s World Cup and the 2024 Olympics run through Monterrey, Mexico, where the squad will begin its qualification campaign Monday.

If you’ve never heard of the CONCACAF W Championship, which runs July 4-18, there’s a good reason for that: it’s a brand new competition. But it’s a pretty important one, specifically because of its new format: it will serve as the qualification tournament for both those aforementioned events, the first time CONCACAF has opted for a double-qualification format. The stakes have never been higher.

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The tournament should be rather forgiving for the Americans. The top four teams in the eight-team tournament qualify automatically for the 2023 Women’s World Cup co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, meaning the USWNT only needs to survive the group stage. But qualifying for the Olympics is where it gets trickier: only the winner of the tournament will directly qualify for Paris 2024. The second- and third-placed teams are not out of it — they will compete in a playoff to be held in September 2023 for the second and final CONCACAF spot — but the U.S. would surely like to get qualifying over with, if possible.

Here is a look at the key questions facing the U.S. heading into the tournament:

Who will lead the USWNT into the future?

Coach Vlatko Andonovski has not been shy to cast veterans aside in favor of younger talent that’s tearing up the National Women’s Soccer League in 2022. Tobin Heath was not called in for these qualifiers and although Christen Press tore an ACL shortly before the roster was announced, Andonovski said he wasn’t planning to call her in anyway.

Instead, newer players like Sophia Smith, Ashley Sanchez and Trinity Rodman are being asked to lead the attack, and they’ve looked plenty capable. (Mallory Pugh isn’t new, but after years on the outs with the…