World Cup Group E: USA favourites as Portugal make their debut

Netherlands

Overview

After the Euro 2022 debacle under Mark Parsons, Andries Jonker has revitalised the team. The Orange Lionesses are once again showing traits of Sarina Wiegman’s golden XI, which peaked in grand fashion in 2017 with European Championship gold and in 2019 earned silver at the World Cup. Unlike Parsons, who only worked part-time in the Netherlands in his first months because of club commitments in Portland, Jonker threw himself into the team 24 hours a day from the start. Moreover, he kept his ear to the ground with his players, each of whom he visited, including the contingent of internationals active abroad.

And the Lionesses reaped the benefits. Jonker considered the heavy workload his top players endured and gave some a rest during international windows. This clever thinking has given the coach a supremely fit squad, barring star player Vivianne Miedema of course, who tore a cruciate ligament before the winter break. The injured forward has played the role of sounding board for Jonker, though, who has had weekly contact with the Arsenal star over the phone in the build-up to the World Cup. It is actions such as these that make his squad a close-knit unit.

Although Jonker wants to keep his playing style and starting line-up a “secret” from his opponents for as long as possible, he gave a glimpse of his formation and tactics during the first serious practice match against Belgium in early July. The almost sacred 4-3-3 in the Netherlands no longer forms the familiar system of the team. With youngsters Victoria Pelova and Esmee Brugts, he has two fast and capable wing-backs who can give the “oldies” in the centre a hand now and then. Both had never played at the back until this season. The speedy Lineth Beerensteyn and Lieke Martens have a free role up front and are supported by Jill Roord.

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Though Jonker prefers a 5-3-2 he can always switch to the familiar 4-3-3 if flexibility is needed. The coach wants his defence higher up the field to put pressure on the opposition more quickly. Going into full pressing mode as a team when losing the ball is the motto these days.

The coach

Andries Jonker is football crazy. Although never a great player himself, his CV boasts some big clubs. The Amsterdam native worked as a coach at the federation (KNVB), was assistant under Louis van Gaal at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, among others, and held roles at FC Volendam, MVV, Willem II and Wolfsburg. He was also director of the academy at Arsenal for three years. He has been the national team coach since 2022, after the European Championship in England. He was also the women’s national team coach on an interim basis in 2001. His clarity and expertise are widely praised by his players, who mark the Mark Parsons era (2021-2022) as a lost year.

Star player

Jill Roord is the big name in the Oranje machine in the absence of injured star Vivianne Miedema. The daughter of former professional footballer René Roord has eye-catching technique, is two-footed and can pass the ball like no other. Her strike rate is also impressive for a midfielder: 21 goals in 86 internationals.

After a strong season with Wolfsburg in the Frauen-Bundesliga and the Champions League, Roord could not play a significant role in the final against Barcelona, who won in dramatic fashion, 3-2. The European champions tried and failed to sign Roord last season and are expected to make another attempt this summer. With only one year left on her Wolfsburg contract, the German club may find it harder to keep hold of her this time around.

Rising star

Esmee Brugts is the new prodigy of Dutch football. Watch the 19-year-old winger dribble and her street skills shine through. Brugts played in boys’ teams for as long as she could. Until she signed a contract with PSV Eindhoven, she played with the boys of FC Binnenmaas, near Rotterdam. It was Brugts, who made her debut against Brazil on February 16th 2022, who shot the Lionesses to the World Cup in the dying seconds of the home game against Iceland.

Although she has played as a striker all her life, Andries Jonker prefers to use the teenager at wing-back in his 5-3-2 system. Brugts was “frightened to death” when she was told she would be in defence, but after a few training sessions and a friendly match she found out that she still has licence to attack. Moreover, she can play alongside her great idol Lieke Martens on the left flank, making a dream come true. The talented player has just left PSV Eindhoven and says she will go on an adventure abroad.

Standing of women’s football in the Netherlands

Women’s football is extremely popular in the Netherlands. In a country of 17 million people, a million are registered players with the federation and almost 20 per cent (180,000) of those are female. The growth of women’s football has been huge – figures doubled compared to 10 years ago. You can be registered with the KNVB (Dutch federation) from the age of six and training at local football clubs with registered coaches is possible from the age of four. The female-registered players are spread across 1,862 clubs in the Netherlands. The popularity of football is also noticeable among TV viewers. Recent figures show that an average of 2.7m viewers watched the Netherlands’ women’s team at either the World Cup or European Championship. The KNVB started the official women’s team in 1971.

Did you know?

One of the Netherlands’ last warm-up matches before the World Cup was against a men’s under-18s team at the KNVB headquarters. The game was played behind closed doors, causing a stir. The Dutch Federation feared bad publicity if journalists happened to see a match where teenage boys beat the national women’s team. The fuss was not necessary – the women won 2-1.

Realistic aim at the World Cup?

The Dutch have been improving game by game in friendly matches and performed very well against Germany, despite losing 1-0. If the Netherlands can match or surpass that form, the team is considered a serious outsider to win it – especially as Jonker’s players appear to be much fitter than under Parsons. Fitness is an obsession for Jonkers, who was shocked during the Euros in England, where he thought the Dutch team looked physically inferior compared to top teams such as England, Germany, France and Spain.

Written by Steven Kooijman for De Telegraaf.

Portugal

Overview

Portugal booked their first appearance at a Women’s World Cup with the last breath of their 13th qualification game. No team played as many games en route to Australia and New Zealand. After 10 matches and a second place behind Germany in the group stage, followed by two victories in the European playoffs against Belgium and Iceland, Carole Costa scored in the fourth minute of injury time in the intercontinental playoff with Cameroon. Her winning penalty finally qualified Portugal.

“It is the happiest day of our lives,” said the defender, one of the senior players in the team, remembering in her celebrations the previous generations of players “who fought for this moment”.

Qualification is the team’s highest point and the main sign of the evolution of Portuguese women’s football. That has led to the first appearances of the national team in women’s Euros, in 2017 and 2022, and now to this unprecedented qualification for the biggest stage of all.

Portugal’s growth has been built around a core group of players who have made this journey together over many years: seven of the World Cup squad have 100 or more caps. They are joined by several other players with international experience and also some new blood, with the talent of Kika Nazareth standing out.

“This is a team with lots of ambition, with many players having an incredible journey with us,” said the coach, Francisco Neto. “We have in the squad 12 players who were at the 2017 European Championship and 19 who went to the last Euros. They are athletes who have grown up in adversity, but show that they are capable of responding. That’s why we are where we are.”

With players who know each other with their eyes closed, Portugal tend to play in a 4-4-2 (diamond) or 4-3-3 system and are eager to improve in competing at the highest level. The main strength of the team is cohesion, the group spirit that has led them to break down barriers.

The coach

Francisco Neto was 32 when he took over the women’s national team. In nine years, he has led Portugal to major competitions for the first time, capitalising on the momentum that the sport has gained in recent times. Neto began his coaching journey at the age of 20, worked with younger teams and as technical coordinator, and ended his coaching training with one of the best grades on the course – ahead, for example, of Sérgio Conceição, the coach of Porto.

Neto has already renewed his contract until 2027, but is concentrating on the World Cup, working on ways to deal with strong teams like the USA and the Netherlands. “We know that we will often be under pressure and it is impossible to spend 90 minutes just defending,” he said. “We want to be able to have the ball, dominate some parts of the game and grow at that moment. We’ve been working on it, we’re better, but we want to grow to be able to compete with these teams.”

Star player

“I have an individual prize here, but that is not important today, because we won everything: we won qualification for the World Cup.” The player of the match award for the playoff that took Portugal to the World Cup was another milestone in a great season for Tatiana Pinto, the 29-year-old midfielder who is experiencing the best phase of her career.

Like many of her generation, Pinto played with boys until her teens as there were no female youth teams. After spells at Sand in Germany and Bristol City, she played five seasons at Sporting and in 2021 moved to Levante. Last season, the dynamic midfielder was one of the highlights of a team that finished third in the Spanish league, scoring 12 goals and making three assists.

Rising star

Kika Nazareth is already more than just promising. At age 20, she has phenomenal talent, creativity and everything necessary to be Portugal’s big star of the future. In the World Cup qualification campaign, she played 10 games, six of them in the starting line-up, and scored three goals. “We must look at ourselves and see the potential and talent we have, we must believe,” said the Benfica player. “I am confident. If we make it through the group stage, the goal is to win everything.”

Did you know?

Ana Borges, Portugal’s most capped player, played three seasons at Chelsea, where she won the WSL and the FA Cup before returning to Portugal to play at Sporting. José Mourinho was in London, during his second spell with the Blues, and gave her some advice. Borges told Maisfutebol: “My trainer said I was very good but I didn’t like the gym. He told me to tell her I didn’t need the gym, I needed to have the ball at my feet.”

Standing of women’s football in Portugal

In March, a derby between Benfica and Sporting was watched by 27,211 people in Estádio da Luz, shattering the record for a women’s game in Portugal. It would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. It’s another milestone in the growth of women’s football, fuelled by the investment of the Portuguese FA and joined by some of the big clubs, such as Sporting, Benfica and Braga. A stronger domestic league, launched in 2016, led to the return of some of the best Portuguese players and to wider public attention, with games broadcast on the FA channel. Still, there remains a world of distance from the men’s game, first of all in the number of players. Among more than 200,000 registered players, between football and futsal, only about 15,000 are women.

Realistic aim at the World Cup?

“We want to reach the last group-stage game with the USA able to qualify for the next stage. If we arrive already qualified, even better.” This is how Neto defines the team’s goal: Portugal do not want to only stay in New Zealand in Group E, they want to go to Australia where the round of 16 will be played. But in such a strong group, that would represent an incredible feat for Portugal, 21st in the Fifa rankings. After finishing fourth in the group at the last two Euros, the most realistic aim is third place.

Written by Berta Rodrigues for Maisfutebol.

USA

Overview

Four years ago in France, the United States became the third team to successfully defend a World Cup since the second World War, joining the Brazil men (in 1962) and the Germany women (in 2007). And while Vlatko Andonovski’s squad have maintained their uninterrupted six-year perch atop the Fifa rankings and will go off as narrow betting favourites in Australia and New Zealand, the Americans’ pursuit of an unprecedented third successive world title has been anything but straightforward amid a sometimes tumultuous generational transition and a recent spate of injuries.

The Americans were compelled to retool their roster after a lacklustre bronze-medal finish with a veteran-heavy squad at the Tokyo Olympics, where their once-swashbuckling attack struggled for ideas in the final third despite ample time on the ball, but it’s anything but a finished product as their three-peat bid draws near. While it’s true the 2015 and 2019 tournament-winners faced urgent questions during the run-up before peaking at the right time, those squads were all but set months in advance. Not this year.

Andonovski wound up choosing 14 first-time World Cup players, up from 11 debutantes in 2019. Questions over the fitness of mainstays Rose Lavelle, Julie Ertz and Megan Rapinoe are concerning enough, but the recent glut of definitive injuries has ensured the newcomers will be pressed into action. Two of the long-intended attacking centrepieces are out of the picture: Chicago Red Stars forward Mallory Swanson, who was in the form of her life with goals in six straight international appearances when she suffered a torn patella tendon during an April friendly, along with Chelsea-bound forward Catarina Macario, who will not be recovered from a torn ACL in time. Also out are squad captain Becky Sauerbrunn and veteran midfielder Sam Mewis. While the Americans do have the squad depth to absorb their absences, they will become far more dependent on youngsters Sophia Smith, Trinity Rodman and Alyssa Thompson, who at 18 is the second youngest player ever to be named to a US World Cup roster after current USWNT assistant coach Tiffany Roberts Sahaydak.

The coach

Andonovski, a long-time NWSL manager who favours a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 formation, has been a steady hand since he succeeded Jill Ellis as the USWNT’s ninth coach in November 2019. But the 23-match unbeaten run to start his tenure was ended by Sweden in their first contest of a Tokyo Olympics that quickly went sideways as his game management came under criticism. Questions over his fitness for the role surfaced in November when the United States suffered their first three-game losing streak in nearly 30 years with friendly defeats to England, Spain and Germany, but his job security has never been in any serious jeopardy. His selections have broadly reflected an emphasis on NSWL form. Consider the surprise pick of Savannah DeMelo, a 25-year-old midfielder enjoying a standout club season for Racing Louisville FC, who is the third player ever to make a US World Cup squad without having previously made an international appearance.

Star player

Sophia Smith. The pacy 22-year-old winger made a convincing pitch as the next face of US women’s soccer with an extraordinary 2022 for club and country, becoming the youngest ever NWSL MVP in leading the Portland Thorns to a third league title while adding 11 international goals to become the youngest player to lead the USWNT in scoring in a calendar year since 1993. With Swanson and Macario both scratched for the World Cup, the Americans will rely on Smith even more for scoring punch. “She can stop pushing now, and she will still be a very good player, one of the best players this country has ever produced,” says Thorns coach Rhian Wilkinson. “And my job is to keep pushing her, and to make sure she is the best player this country has ever produced because she has that in her right now.”

Rising star

Naomi Girma. The 22-year-old centre-back, who has been capped 15 times since making her senior debut last year, has established herself in Andonovski’s team with her mature poise, vision, distribution and ability at a position where experience is typically valued. During a standout debut season with the San Diego Wave that saw her win NWSL Rookie of the Year and Defender of the Year honours, the Californian has been equally rock-solid for country whether paired alongside Alana Cook or Sauerbrunn. “[She’s not just] making five-yard passes to the person next to her,” former USWNT star Carli Lloyd said. “She’s threading balls through the centre of the park, picking out forwards’ feet.”

Did you know?

Rose Lavelle, the breakout midfield star of the last World Cup whose left-footed strike in the final was hailed as an instant classic, has a 10-year-old English bulldog named Wilma Jean Wrinkles (who is closing in on 13,000 followers on Instagram) that she FaceTimes from the road.

Standing of women’s football in the US?

The 1972 passage of the federal legislation known as Title IX – the law that makes it illegal for government-funded institutions to discriminate on the basis of sex – mandated equal funding for women’s sports programs that gave the United States a crucial head start on the international scene and generated a player pool that remains the envy of the world even as the gap is narrowing.

Additionally, soccer’s modest popularity in the United States among men’s sports has given the women’s game ample space to flourish.

Realistic aim at the World Cup?

The United States have won four World Cups and never finished worse than third in the tournament, adding four Olympic gold medals along the way. Anything short of a fifth would be a disappointment. But the historic feat of winning a third straight – so far from home, so compromised by injury, the once-yawning gap with their rivals never slimmer – promises their stiffest test to date.

Written by Bryan Graham for the Guardian US.

Vietnam

Overview

Making their Women’s World Cup debut in 2023, Vietnam are one of the least experienced teams in the tournament. The women’s national side was only formed in 1990 and the team played its first official international match in 1997. Around this time, many of the mainstays of the current side were just being born. However over the last 26 years, the team has made great strides, recently rising from 42nd to 32nd in the Fifa world rankings (and from eighth to fifth in Asia).

Over the past 10 years, Vietnamese women’s football has witnessed an advance at lightning speed with the team being crowned SEA Games champions four times in a row. Their achievements in Southeast Asia are a solid stepping stone for Vietnam to assert themselves on the international stage. Vietnam officially earned their place in the World Cup after an intense playoff series in the 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup, where they won against Thailand and Taiwan (Chinese Taipei).

Although there is a lot to do regarding women’s football development, Vietnam is still able to maintain a national championship with seven teams participating. We have also witnessed the first internationally exported players in Vietnamese women’s football history, such as Huynh Nhu to Portugal and Tran Thi Hong Nhung to Thailand. The team’s appearance at the World Cup is expected to be a boost to women’s football growth so that Vietnam can close the gap to the top Asian teams.

“We don’t set high ambitions but during this tournament we can learn a lot,” the coach, Mai Duc Chung, told fifa.com. “It’s a chance for us to compete with very good opponents, and we can learn from their experience, skills and techniques. We also have to be mentally strong. We will respect all the competitors, but we are not scared.”

For their first World Cup, Vietnam will play on the counterattack. The strength of this side is that they possess a pair of fast wingers (Tuyet Dung, Thanh Nha), and an agile striker who is also a good finisher (Huynh Nhu). This style of play helped the Vietnamese women’s team score against Germany during a friendly match in Frankfurt in June.

The coach

The World Cup will be Mai Duc Chung’s last tournament as the head coach of Vietnam women’s team, closing the curtain on a glorious career with both the women’s and men’s national teams. Various foreign coaches had been hired, but no one could make Vietnam’s World Cup dream come true until Chung. He is famous for being a “stuntman” (or emergency caretaker) as he has, far too many times, been temporarily placed in charge of Vietnam’s men’s and under-23 teams in times of crisis, until a new coach could be found.

Star player

Huynh Nhu, the only exported Vietnamese player in the squad, is the captain, the main striker and the entire team’s inspiration. She has scored seven goals in her first season at Länk in Portugal. The five-times Vietnam Golden Ball Winner has shown great adaptability to the European environment and is discussing a contract extension with Länk. And what a coincidence: Portugal are Huynh Nhu and her team-mates’ second opponent in the World Cup group stage.

In terms of playing style, Huynh Nhu is a comprehensive striker, she shoots well with either foot, is dangerous in the air and can dribble. Huynh Nhu is also a threat from free-kicks, as she has shown during her time at Länk.

Rising star

At 21 years old, Nguyen Thi Thanh Nha already has 27 caps for Vietnam, scoring seven goals. She has won two SEA Games gold medals, competed in the Asian Cup quarter-finals and will be key in this World Cup. A tricky and versatile attacker, Thanh Nha – already a star on Vietnamese social networks – is not an expert finisher but her speed is extremely impressive. In the friendly match which Vietnam lost 2-1 in Germany, she showed quick feet before scoring against the team ranked second in the world.

Did you know?

In a time where naturalisation has become common and can be found in every corner of the world, Vietnam’s women’s side stand out as there are no naturalised or overseas players in the team. All of the squad have trained domestically and most of the players play for Vietnamese clubs. Huynh Nhu is the only one currently playing football abroad.

Standing of women’s football in Vietnam

Football is the most popular sport in Vietnam, but women’s football is not on an equal footing with the men’s game. With the exception of the national team getting a considerable amount of attention, most club-level matches attract only a few hundred to one thousand fans to a stadium. Vietnamese women’s football still has a long way to go to reach professionalisation, and better commercialisation, to get more attention.

Realistic aim at the World Cup?

Being placed in Group E with reigning world champions the USA and the 2019 runners-up the Netherlands, Vietnam are not a realistic candidate for one of the top two positions. Vietnam’s most likely target is to limit the number of goals conceded and to try to look for something in the other match against Portugal, who are a fellow World Cup first-timer.

Written by Minh Chien Tu for Zing.