U.S. Women’s National Team ready for Zambia and Paris Olympics : NPR

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PARIS — The U.S. women’s soccer team heads into the Paris Olympics with a new coach and an opportunity to reset after dismal performances at recent major tournaments.

The question now is: Can the team capitalize?

Speaking at a news conference in Marseille, France, head coach Emma Hayes insisted the team is looking forward, following its earliest ever exit at a Women’s World Cup last year.

“We’ve moved past that. I think this team is past that. Our motivation isn’t always about righting the wrongs. Far from it. We’re excited — we’re prepared,” she said.

The U.S. women’s team has won four Olympic gold medals, but none since 2012. The team stumbled at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics (exiting without a medal after losing to Sweden) and winning only bronze at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

This will be the first major tournament for Hayes, who joined the team this year after wrapping up her 12th season at Chelsea FC. In the team’s two final warmup games before heading to France, the U.S. scored just one goal, beating Mexico 1-0 and having a 0-0 draw against Costa Rica.

Sophia Smith, who scored the only goal against Mexico, said that at this point, the team is looking only forward.

“We take one game at a time, and with Emma coming in, we’ve learned a lot, we’ve grown a lot and we’ve introduced a lot of new things that I think will help us have success in this tournament,” she said.

In an interview with NPR before the team traveled to France, Hayes described the United States’ group-stage matches as “three very tough group games” with “three very different propositions.”

“Zambia, probably one of the best transition counterattacking teams in the world. They probably have the world’s best striker on current form, Barbra Banda,” Hayes said, adding that the goal threat would be “exceptional.”

Banda is a star for Zambia, and for the Orlando Pride.

“I know what a threat she can be,” said defender Emily Fox, of Banda. “Their entire team is a threat, especially with their transition. But we’re ready for it. … We know Zambia is going to be a really tough opponent to play against, so focusing on them and going from there.”

The team will play Zambia in Nice (kickoff is at 3 p.m. ET on Thursday), before closing out the group stage in Marseille against Germany and Australia.

Asked, as a new coach, how much pressure she personally feels to perform at the Olympics, Hayes said that she pays little attention to external pressure and that she is “very grateful for the history of the program.” But she suggested that expectations of U.S. dominance may be misplaced because of the quality of the women’s game internationally.

The U.S. is ranked fifth in FIFA’s international rankings. That is the lowest spot ever since FIFA began ranking women’s teams more than two decades ago.

“The reality is the world’s game has caught up and in some places taken over,” Hayes said. “We have to focus on what we have to do to be able to find those levels again. But also recognizing it isn’t 10 years ago, where there wasn’t parity in the world game. There is parity now.”

“So I don’t think anybody should expect one team to completely dominate the football landscape in today’s football in the way that it was 10 years ago,” she added.