US Women's Soccer Team Hopes Change Will Bring Olympic Gold

By Chris Cox

Washington

08 July 2008

　

The U.S. Women's Soccer team has won a medal at every Olympic game since women's soccer was introduced at the Atlanta games in 1996. The Americans won the gold in Atlanta, silver at the 2000 Sydney games, and reclaimed the gold in the 2004 Athens Olympics. But after an underachieving third place finish at the last year's Women's World Cup in China, changes were made. VOA's Chris Cox has the story.

One of the biggest changes the United States Women's Soccer team has seen is style of play under new head coach Pia Sundhage. She wants her team to control the ball and dictate tempo more.

The 48-year-old is the first-ever foreign-born person to coach the national team and the second woman. Before taking the job last November, Sundhage was familiar with many of the U.S. players, as she was a head coach in the WUSA, the now-defunct U.S. professional women's soccer league. At last year's women's World Cup in China, she was an assistant on the Chinese coaching staff.

For the Beijing Olympics, Sundhage named seven players who were not part of the team during last year's disappointing third place finish at the Women's World Cup, and she selected three to their first roster for a senior national team.

Sundhage has tried to infuse some of her Swedish style into the team's game plan and told VOA Sports she is happy with the way her players have adjusted to both her and her style.

"You know, it seems like they love it. Well, they like it, at least," she said. "And it seems that they like me, so that's a good start. Then, the fact that they're interested and they're curious about this new Swedish style - or whatever you want to call it - that makes it so much easier. So, I'm brave and I want to make some changes and they are very brave because it seems like they want to follow the coaching staff."

Co-captain Kate Markgraf, one of two remaining players from the 1999 Women's World Cup championship team, is making her third trip to the Olympics and she told VOA what it's like to play for Sundhage.

"Pia brings a sense of calm. She brings a sense of confidence and she wants us to play beautiful soccer and that's what she's trying to teach us to do and she is doing that by possession-oriented play," she said.

Although Markgraf and Christie Rampone are the co-captains, it is clear that Abby Wambach is the offensive star for the U.S. soccer team. She scored four goals at the Athens Olympics, including the game winner in the gold medal match against Brazil. Through 125 international games played, the 28-year-old Wambach had scored 99 goals.

Wambach told VOA it's an honor to play for her country.

"Not only is it just about soccer, it's about national pride and it's about a culture," she said. "And I know all the other countries that are competing for a medal are feeling the same way and, you know, you want to make your people proud, and you want to make them proud to say that they're an American. So I hope that we do that every time that we step on the field because we play with integrity, honor, and we really try to leave everything that we have out on the field to show the rest of the world how much we really do care about this country."

The third place finish for the top-ranked U.S. Women at the 2007 World Cup came as a surprise and brought some controversy to the team. Though she had started the previous four games, goalie Hope Solo was benched for the semifinal game against Brazil in favor of a more experienced, but much older, Briana Scurry. The U.S. lost that game, 4-0, and Solo made some comments criticizing then-coach Greg Ryan's decision that were also indirectly critical of Scurry.

Under Sundhage, things have been patched up and Solo is back as the clear number-one goalie for the United States.

Markgraf insists that the controversy is a thing of the past.

"I think that, was something that happened and it was in 2007 and now it's 2008, and if we hadn't learned anything from that, then I would say it's still going on, but we've learned a lot and thankfully we're through that," she said.

The USA is back as the world's number-one-ranked women's soccer team and goes into the Beijing Olympics as the favorite to win the gold. Coach Sundhage understands the expectations, but realizes that no victory will come easy.

"I'd say there are five, six teams that could win the gold medal and U.S. is one of these teams, and the way we've been playing I'm very happy about that," the coach said. "We changed certain things and we are going [on the] right road to the Olympics I think."

The U.S. Women's Soccer team opens 2008 Olympics play against Norway on August 6 in Qinhuangdao, two days before the Beijing Summer Games' official opening ceremonies.

The other two teams the U.S. women will face in first round group play are Japan (August 9 in Qinhuangdao) and New Zealand (August 12 in Shenyang).