I don't know if Emma Hayes is a miracle worker, but right now she's playing one on TV. Or maybe you didn't see what the USWNT did on the soccer pitch yesterday.
Won the Olympic gold medal. That's what it did.
Barely two months after Hayes became the team's head coach, the U.S. women beat Brazil, 1-0, with a lineup of fresh faces and bodacious young talent. Remember the names: Mallory Swanson, Sophia Smith, Alyssa Naeher, Lindsey Horan, Trinity Rodman. You're going to hear them a lot in the coming years.
Yesterday they delivered the gold for the first time in 12 years, and just a year after crashing out of the World Cup in the quarterfinals. And they did it with guile and grit and heads-up smarts beyond their years.
Consider the winning goal, for instance: Swanson scored it in the 57th minute on a perfect lead from Korbin Albert, while Smith alertly veered off to keep the play from being offside.
It was a veteran move from a less-than-seasoned veteran, and the sort of play the American women unfurled from the moment they dispatched Zambia 4-0 in their Olympic opener. And, of course, it was a testament to the coaching chops of Hayes, the Englishwoman who built a women's Premier League powerhouse at Chelsea. In fewer than eights weeks, she transformed a group of talented young Americans into an absolute razor, a tough-minded group with dazzling firepower and level heads who never blinked when things got tense.
Maybe that does make Hayes a miracle worker, on second thought. Or just proof that all those little girls playing soccer out there in America are going to keep the USWNT well-fed for years to come.
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