Does the 2023 World Cup signal the end of USWNT dominance?

When Sweden eliminated the U.S. women’s national team from the 2023 Women’s World Cup on Sunday, it marked the end of an era. It had been 4,403 days since the Americans last felt the sting of World Cup elimination, that being the 2011 Women’s World Cup final against Japan. Now, in a little less than two weeks, a new World Cup champion will be crowned.

There was a certain inevitability about the USWNT’s demise, too — after all, no team wins forever. Yet the U.S. team’s World Cup exit felt more seismic, as if years of cracks appearing in the American game — poor performances in youth World Cups, the paucity of creative players, the wake-up call at the last Olympics, to name a few — suddenly became chasms, ending in a World Cup run that was far below the U.S. team’s usual standard.

So is the end of this era for the U.S. a harbinger of an even more severe backslide? Is the U.S. looking at no longer being a dominant force in the international game? That depends on one’s definition. Does “dominant” mean winning trophies or being a contender?

Throughout its history, the USWNT was at least the latter, and the team won often enough to accomplish the former. During the Americans’ spell as World Cup champions, they failed to win the gold medal at two Olympic games. This included a quarterfinal exit in 2016 to Sweden that bore an eerie resemblance — a defeat via a penalty shootout in a game that the Americans dominated — to Sunday’s encounter. The U.S. also went 16 years between World Cup wins in 1999 and 2015, but that was interspersed with three Olympic triumphs. All of this points to the fact that there have been ebbs and flows to the U.S. team’s preeminence.

The problem in 2023 is that with the exception of the Sweden game, the U.S. didn’t ever look like a contender, recording its worst finish at a major tournament….