It happens all the time: the referee awards a free kick in a team’s attacking third, and the player on the ball attempts to find a more favorable position before delivering.
Who could begrudge U.S. women’s national team midfielder Rose Lavelle for seeking a marginal advantage in the 95th minute on Saturday when the U.S. played Brazil in Sao Paulo? The U.S. were trailing by a goal and Jaedyn Shaw, Lavelle’s club teammate at Gotham, had drawn a foul on the left, about 10 yards from the penalty box.
About three minutes remained. As Lavelle prepared to take her free kick, she rolled the ball three paces away from the site of the foul toward the center of the pitch — that is, until Spanish referee Maria Eugenia Gil Soriano instructed her to return the ball to its original spot.
Lavelle reluctantly complied. But as Soriano backed away, the U.S. midfielder nudged the ball back to where she wanted it. That’s when 31,336 onlookers raised the volume inside the Neo Química Arena, almost as if to say, “Hey, put that back.”
What was conveyed, however, was even more incisive: “You can’t get away with that here. This is our house.”
That much was clear as the hosts saw the game out to win 2-1, and will likely remain the case in tonight’s second meeting in Fortaleza at the Arena Castelão in the northeastern region of the country. And this, more than any cutting-edge technology or set-piece choreography, is the best training the USWNT will receive on its trip to where the World Cup will be held next year.
Come to Brazil
The Brazil fans were loud and proud in Sao Paulo (Brad Smith/USSF/Getty Images)
Before Saturday, the USWNT had not played against Brazil in Brazil since 2014. All of their matches have been staged in the U.S. or a neutral site, like the Parc des Princes in Paris for the 2024 Olympics gold medal match. The U.S. won 1-0 before a 2-0 success in their next meeting at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on April 5 last year. Three days later at San Jose’s PayPal Park, Brazil struck back, overpowering the U.S. in stoppage time for a 2-1 win.
Saturday’s defeat was the first time the U.S. fell to the same opponent on consecutive occasions since 2011. They have won the vast majority of their duels with Brazil (34-4-5 heading into these fixtures), but there has been much more parity on Brazilian soil. Before this trip, it was 2-2-2.
U.S. manager Emma Hayes said after Saturday’s game that some players had never competed in an atmosphere where their team was the unanimous enemy. Except for Liga MX Femenil in Mexico, top-flight women’s professional football leagues in the northern hemisphere are hardly hotbeds of bitter rivalries and impassioned fans. Booing in the National Women’s Soccer League and the Women’s Super League in the UK, for example, is more likely to be aimed at a referee’s wayward decision than an opponent.
The USWNT’s road trips have been few and far between, too. The last time the U.S. played outside the country was for a set of European friendlies against England and the Netherlands in the final months of 2024.
“That’s why I keep leaning into the fact that sometimes we create too many perfect conditions,” Hayes said. “We’ve created a culture in our football world in the United States that’s, ‘Well, do we need to do as much of that? Do we do less of this?’
“We have got to be tougher in lots of things, and we have got to be more durable, and we’ve got to expose ourselves to the elements of the game.”
How, then, to adequately prepare Ally Sentnor, a darling of American soccer with her University of North Carolina and NWSL No. 1 draft pick pedigrees? These experiences should happen much earlier in a player’s career than a year out from the World Cup.
Mallory Swanson and Emma Hayes in discussion after the defeat to Brazil (Brad Smith/USSF/Getty Images)
It’s a question that’s prompted discussion between U.S. Soccer and the NWSL about how to create more of these opportunities, Hayes said.
U.S. players compete in fewer matches across a four-year cycle than most other top-ranked nations. Even within Concacaf, the NWSL plays fewer midweek matches (four) than Liga MX Femenil (11). Bringing the U.S. under-23 national team to Brazil chips away at that early exposure, as have previous camps for that age group in Spain and France, but some things can’t be replicated.
“I’ve coached in (and) at PSG, which was an experience,” Hayes said, referring to her tenure as Chelsea manager before taking this job. “I coached at Barcelona, the Nou Camp. That was an experience.
“This,” she emphasized about Brazil, “is unlike anything else. They live and they breathe it in a certain way. This is the most extreme but beautiful end of it, like, the crowd are fantastic. But you have to perform with all of that.”
When second-division teams play in stadiums that hold more than 57,000 people, it’s usually an indicator of a serious footballing nation. That is what the U.S. will face in its second “mock exam,” as Hayes called it.
Brazil is laying the groundwork for an historic World Cup, the first hosted by a South American country on the women’s side. The numbers in São Paulo proved the devotion to the beautiful game is free-flowing and vast, and it will only grow — from Brazil, to Argentina, to Colombia and Paraguay and Venezuela.
The U.S. luxury of being the forever home team was always meant to be short-lived, but harnessing the power from facing adversity could make them unstoppable. This may be their last chance to learn that before the World Cup.
