USWNT stock watch after Australia friendlies

It finally feels like the new era of the U.S. women’s national team has begun. With the retirement of legend Carli Lloyd out of the way with last month’s games, U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski brought a young squad to Australia for a two-game series that finished up Tuesday, including five USWNT players who got their first caps.

With a 3-0 win Saturday for the USWNT followed by a 1-1 draw on Tuesday, the Matildas may not have provided the sting the Americans may need in the long run, but the games did mark a full page-turn from the summer’s 2020 Olympics, which saw the U.S. finish with bronze. With an average age of 26 years old and a dozen of the players with single-digit (or fewer) caps, the trip abroad was a good test for an American team that is very much in transition after failing to meet expectations in Japan.

Of course, the Matildas are a team in transition, too. Their weakest spot, central defense, was even more vulnerable thanks to a new pairing — 17-year-old debutant Jessika Nash and 19-year-old Courtney Nevin — who were tested together in the first game. Matildas coach Tony Gustavsson had no choice but to tinker and try to shore up an Aussie back line that’s conceded a whopping 36 goals in 15 games. That may have flattered the USWNT a bit, but there’s no denying that the USWNT was the better team in the first game, and they also looked destined for another win until giving up a late equalizer in the second.

Andonovski was clearly experimenting not just with new players, but also with tactics, as the Americans switched to a back-five defense in a new formation at one point. But as small of a sample size as a pair of games is, playing on “enemy” turf in front of a record-sized crowd in Australia is as good a test as any of these players may get for some time — after all, the USWNT doesn’t usually go abroad that for friendlies that often.

So who rose to the challenge and raised their stock within the USWNT pool?

GK Casey Murphy