Why does the USWNT look so different at the 2024 Olympics? - ESPN

Here are two things I thought I felt quite strongly about just a few days ago:

(1) The U.S. women's national team wasn't as bad as everyone thought at last year's World Cup. (2) International managers don't manage as much as everyone thinks.

Two games into the 2024 Olympics, I don't really know what to believe anymore.

First, the U.S. dominated Zambia 3-0. And although that team includes two of the best players on the planet in Barbra Banda and Racheal Kundananji, it's still Zambia, the 64th-ranked team in the world. Plus, after a 34th-minute red card, the U.S. played two-thirds of the match with an 11-10 advantage. There were plenty of reasons not to get too excited about the progress — until the Americans obliterated Germany on Sunday: a 4-1 win against the fourth-ranked team in the world, and no red-card-related reasons to write anything off.

Two games into Emma Hayes' first tournament at the helm, the Americans already look like they might be back to being the dominant team in world soccer. At the very least, per ESPN BET, they're the favorites to take gold — ahead of the current world champions, Spain.

But it's not just that the Americans are playing better than they did a year ago, when the U.S. suffered its worst finish at a World Cup. It's that a very similar roster of players suddenly looks totally different. What has changed about the way the U.S. is playing, and why is it playing so much better under Hayes than it was previously?

The story of last summer's struggles was pretty simple: The U.S. couldn't put the ball in the net.

Across its four World Cup matches, the U.S. created a ridiculous 9.3 expected goals. That's about 2.3 xG per game — or right around what the best attacks in the women's club game tend to