The U.S. women’s national team retained its regional title and qualified for the 2024 Olympics on a Monday night that began with unease.
The Tokyo Olympics had spawned it. The past two weeks in Monterrey, Mexico, at the CONCACAF W Championship, had aggravated it. The USWNT, by its own coach’s admission, remained a work in progress. “If you ask me if we’re ready to go into a competitive World Cup tomorrow,” Vlatko Andonovski said last week, “we’re probably not ready for it.”
But in Monday’s final, the U.S. women offered reminders of unmistakable truths.