US Women's National Team vs. Sweden: 4 Thoughts from Team USA's Win

The United States women’s national team took on Sweden Saturday morning, earning a solid 3-1 win .

Here are four thoughts from the game.

Pia Sundhage deserves credit for experimenting

The U.S. lined up in a 4-4-2, which has been typical of the team since Olympic qualifying ended. However, this time, their four midfield players were arranged in a diamond rather than straight across.

The change appeared to be intended to bring Lauren Cheney, the team’s maestro, into a more attacking role, where she seems best fitted and a role which many US fans have been eagerly awaiting.

The formation change had some negatives

The change, at least on paper, appeared to be done to put Cheney in more of a “playmaking” role. However, Cheney struggled to get involved during the game and, conscious of her defensive responsibilities, seemed to be too far away from the forwards to truly impact the attack.

The other issue with the formation was the single holding midfielder. First Shannon Boxx, and then Carli Lloyd after the half, were placed in the role by themselves which opened up a lot of space for the Swedish forwards, who were adept at exploiting the additional time and space to continuously breakdown the American backline.

Where to go from here?

If the 4-4-2 with two holding midfielders is too defensive, and a 4-4-2 diamond does not get Cheney involved in the attack enough and creates defensive problems, how can the US make adjustments going forward?

One option may be the 4-2-3-1 the US used in the months after the 2011 World Cup and during the Olympic qualifying tournament. The issue with the 4-2-3-1, while it created outstanding attacking play and kept the back line tight, was that Alex Morgan’s outstanding play created a selection problem for the lone forward role as Abby Wambach is still a world-class striker.

Sundhage could never seem to use Morgan as one of the wide attacking players and thus was forced to revert to a two-striker system. However, if Sundhage could be convinced to play Morgan in a wide attacking role with Wambach as the hold-up forward and Cheney underneath as the team’s maestro, a 4-2-3-1 may be the way to go.

Heather Mitts was torched all day long

The US started the game with Christie Rampone and Rachel Buehler at center back, Amy LePeilbet on the left and Heather Mitts at right back.

With the injury to Ali Krieger, the US has lost some depth at outside back, but Mitts is clearly not the answer.

Over the past few years, Mitts has started to struggle against better teams, a problem which has become increasingly obvious over the past six months.

Sundhage needs to utilize Becky Sauerbrunn, either as an outside back or as a center back and pushing Buehler wide, or play LePeilbet and Kelley O’Hara as the outside backs.

Another interesting proposition to provide some depth to the back line could be to turn Amy Rodriguez or Heather O’Reilly into defenders, as the US has recently done with O’Hara to great success.

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