Young Players

“Sermanni calls up high school goalkeeper!” “Sermanni calls in 18 year old PSG forward, Lindsey Horan!” “Sermanni calls up 2012 U-20 World Cup stars!”

These were all indicators that the coach known for finding talent in young players and injecting youth into national teams was living up to his reputation. But wait in 2007 Sundhage’s first training camp of 24 players included four teenagers (Tobin Heath, Michelle Enyeart, Casey Nogueira, and Nikki Washington). So far Sermanni has called up two teenagers to two training camps (29 and 23 players). How about rosters? Well there we’re even as Heath and Horan were the only teenagers on game day rosters and subsequently the only teenagers to receive caps in Sundhage and Sermanni’s first six games as USWNT coach.

Perhaps looking at college-aged players might reveal something different. Sundhage called  in seven collegiate players to her first training camp and three made it onto her first roster. Sermanni called in three collegians plus one high schooler and all three plus Horan have made rosters and had playing time thus far.

In general the age thing might not be a good determinant of whether Sermanni is that much different from Sundhage in infusing new talent into the USWNT. In fact for his first tournament roster the median age was 27 years old while Sundhage’s first tournament roster was 24 years old. The idea that the college game is no longer good enough of a training ground for the international level may have some merit looking at these stats. (Or Sundhage was equally, if not more, willing to bring new young players into the fold in the beginning.)

Uncapped Players

Christen Press has provided four goals and one assist within her first six caps, so what was Sundhage doing not giving caps to new players? True, Sundhage had not capped an uncapped player since the second game of 2011, but what wer her first six games like? Within the first six games of her tenure as USWNT head coach, Sundhage capped four uncapped players and even gave each of them at least one start (six total). In total these four players received 13 caps within the first six games. Sermanni has capped six uncapped players with 15 total caps (also six starts total) within the first six games. Alright so this shows a little more difference in a coach’s willingness to give caps out, not by much but a little.

Across The Board

 *Random interesting factoid: Press has not played a full 90 yet.

Basically this shows that Sundhage gave more chances to play to a slightly smaller group of players. But really their habits as new USWNT weren’t too far off from one another. All of this is just to say, it is too early to pass judgement on Sermanni, good or bad. It is exciting as fans of the team and the sport to see a new style of coaching and new players, but really at this point it is just a new coach getting to know his player pool. Sundhage did the same thing back in 2008 when it might have been easier to stick with experienced players (although maybe not, given the team dynamic post 2007 World Cup). Sermanni is likely to develop his favorites and go-to lineups as he develops familiarity with the players and while it may be frustrating for players of the peripheral and fans, if it ain’t broke why fix it? 

Let’s look at the overall vote distribution. The biggest separation between two players was between Wambach and Marta. Considering the amount of press and attention Morgan received this past year it is rather surprising to see she barely beat out Sawa to be the third finalist for the award. People were outraged that Sinclair wasn’t in the top three but she wasn’t far off (just .54%). Rapinoe is pretty clearly the lowest vote-getter yet if you look at actual votes she got some votes from important teams (Australia, France, and Sweden’s captains and Canadian coach Herdman all included her in their top 3).

Notice how the rankings change if they are based on the coaches’ votes. Wambach remains number one but Sawa jumps up to second. Fukumoto leaps from ninth all the way to fourth. These rankings seem to show that coaches appreciate defense/captains more than scoring. Given that they deal with figuring out how to get their teams to gel and produce on the pitch this is not terribly surprising.

The captains’ votes are a little more evenly distributed. Wambach’s lead over Marta is less than 3% and less than 10% separates number two from number ten. These rankings look much more similar to the overall votes than the coaches’ votes did perhaps showing that coaches indeed are a different breed.

It should be noted that much fewer members of the media get to vote for the awards than do captains and coaches. Still, these rankings seem to show that the media likes winners and the names in lights. All three Japanese nominees are in the bottom four whereas Lloyd is the second highest vote-getter. Sinclair also makes her long-awaited appearance in the top three.

You might have noticed my tweet from earlier today (@uswntstats) or in the charts above that Morgan is not in the top three in any of the three categories and yet came in third overall. How did this happen? Through the coaches and captains votes Morgan is 1.92 percentage points behind Sawa but thanks to the media she makes up 1.95 percentage points and overcame Sawa to take third place.

Pia Sundhage received a similar (actually an even larger) effect from the media. Norio Sasaki actually received more of the coaches votes than Sundhage and they received the same percentage of captains’ votes. But Sundhage made up all of that ground due to the media’s votes.

Sticking with the coach of the year award, I think the most interesting voting behavior was the fact that Christine Sinclair did not vote for John Herdman as one of the top three coaches. In total there were six full national team coaches up for the award and of those Sinclair (Can.), Soubeyrand (Fra.), and Stoney (Eng.) did not vote for their own coaches.

If I have time I’d love to look into how teams that played against Brazil, the USWNT, Japan, and/or France voted. But the fact USWNT started off 2013 with the world recognizing their 2012 success doesn’t count for much as now their focus must shift to the future and the 2015 World Cup.

1. Total numbers of goals and assists is not everything.

Here’s an abbreviated look at some interesting cases. Cheney had eleven assists and two goals, an impressive amount by any standard but then you see that with less than half the total amount of contributions Boxx still has a higher weighted contribution total. The average weight stat is just an added column to more clearly depict how different a player’s contribution can be in terms of importance. Some players are able to perform more against poor competition and it helps them pad their goal and assists statistics but those contributions are much less important than a contribution in a game where the result depends on one goal.

2. Offensive production was strong. Very strong.

Seven players (if you include Krieger) could be expected to score or assist if they played a full 90 minutes. Of those only Leroux and Rodriguez were regular subs. Morgan, Rapinoe, Wambach, and O’Reilly (and Krieger) started more games than they subbed.

3. The entire team got involved.

22 players got playing time. 20 players got starts. 18 players contributed either a goal or an assist. 17 players assisted on at least one goal. 12 players scored a goal. Every player that scored (except for Lindsey) also assisted on at least one goal. 10 players contributed to at least 10 goals (either scoring or assisting).
I think point #3 is a good recap for the entire year. 2012 was a year to remember for the USWNT. Yes, there were stars and yes there were great individual performances but what really happened was a team effort and other teams just could not handle the USWNT’s depth and talent.

First, the assists. Two-thirds of the assists were played from outside of the 18-yard box. This could range from Rapinoe’s assist to Lloyd in the gold medal game, essentially at the center circle, to the O’Reilly’s assist to Morgan’s game-winner in the semifinal. I would venture to say that Rapinoe was not explicitly expecting her pass to be an assist while O’Reilly definitely was. In any case, this shows that defenses should have been aware of USWNT playing a final pass prior to them reaching the penalty area.

Secondly, the flank midfielders love their flanks but they also can’t resist tucking in centrally. Rapinoe did well on both flanks while the other outside mids enjoyed success on their main flank but also provided service centrally. This is also bad news for opposing teams as they continue to be dangerous wherever they are.

*Morgan had an assist off of a throw-in. There were also 2 own goals scored by the opposition this year. This is not accounted for in these numbers.

Some players are clearly more comfortable with one side of their body. For instance, Morgan loves the left. We all know that Morgan is left-footed and both her assisting and scoring habits show this tendency. Of her 21 assists, 15 came off of her left foot, 5 off of her right foot, and 1 off of a throw-in. She also scored 19 goals with her left foot. On the other side, despite the fact that her left foot launched the USWNT back into public consciousness, Rapinoe is clearly right foot dominant with 10 assists and 6 goals from her right foot.

Heath continues to befuddle. Her assists and goal-scoring do not show a true tendency (although watching her dribble would suggest she is right-footed). While she did spend time on the right flank during some games, she produced assists exclusively from the left – and the center. Heath’s ability with both feet and her ability to create from both the left and the center suggest that she might do well centrally as many have pushed for recently.

The assist is crucial. Goalscorers often get all the glory but the large majority of goals scored were scored on the first touch. Yes, this means that the goal scorer had only one touch to get it right but it also shows that the ball was played to a prime location for goal scoring.

Wambach, like Morgan, is left-footed. This is not shown as clearly in her goals as in her assists. However her dominance in the air is shown in both statistics. Wambach actually scored the most goals with her head, then her right foot, and then her preferred left foot. My only reasoning for this is that 24 of her goals came on the first touch where she could not and did not settle the ball so that she could shoot with her left foot whereas Morgan actually scored more goals that required at least 1 touch prior to shooting and her natural tendency was to settle the ball for her left foot.

In general, the USWNT is slightly more productive with their right feet than their left feet, this is not surprising as most are right-footed. But really, all this exercise has shown is that the USWNT has the talent to be dangerous from all areas of the pitch and in 2012 no one had any real success in preventing them from banging in goal after goal.

If you’ve read my prologue or About section you’ll see that I earned my degree from Northwestern University in Sociology. Therefore Joanna Lohman’s recent argument about the new women’s league using Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory peaked my interest. As a fan of women’s soccer I was immediately grateful to read a developed and sophisticated articulation of one person’s beliefs on how to best market the new league, indeed it’s a well thought out article and certainly brings up a few great points. However it is also an example of how sociological theories can be easily twisted to fit a situation.

I spent a good time in college learning about sociological theories but even if you read the Wikipedia article that Lohman linked to, you will see that Lohman drew from a very broad idea of the Diffusion of Innovations theory (AKA Malcolm Gladwell’s explanation of it) and applied it to the marketing of the new women’s league. The problem with sociology is that since it explains recurring phenomenons in society people begin to think of it as common sense. They hear the first thing about the theory and it makes sense to their frame of reference so they go on without completely understanding the theory.

Let’s assume that Lohman is correct in saying that the expansion and acceptance of the new women’s league will follow the Diffusion of Innovations theory (it is definitely not a law).  The first group to accept an innovation are “Innovators,” 2.5% of the population. I would argue that the innovators do not need to be marketed to. The reason why innovators are innovators is that they are willing to take risks and invest in something new. They are already open to new ideas and interested in adopting them before there is time and proof that it is a good investment. Really, the owners of the teams and league’s sponsors are more likely to be the innovators as people with greater financial resources and willingness to invest it in the league.

Instead the people to market a new league and really any invention is the “Early Adopters” group. First off, this makes a much larger portion of the society, 13.5%. Second, it is within this group that an innovation actually takes off within society. Typically the opinion leaders of society are part of the “Early Adopters” portion of society and to be honest that is the group anybody wants to market their product to. This concept can be seen as early as childhood when kids adopt the idea of “cool.” I am not trying to argue that the new league needs to become the hip place to be, but rather the league leaders need to determine which part of society they want the women’s league’s audience to be and attract that group’s opinion leaders. Maybe that is the soccer moms or maybe that is the crazy sports enthusiasts, either way the league will need those opinion leaders to latch on to the league. Who are these people? People with influence, people with an audience that will listen to them and, most importantly, people who can convince others to put money where they tell them to.

Why else is the “Early Adopters” group so important? They are over 600% the size of the “Innovators” and yet some of the fastest adopters. It is important that this league has some sort of success early on and a small “Innovators” contingency of fans is not going to be good enough. These “Early Adopters” will bring the league much closer to critical mass than the “Innovators” can.

From there the rest of the marketplace will slowly follow the leads of the “Innovators” and “Early Adopters”. The other groups are much slower to act than the first two groups (a fact that league investors and leaders should keep in mind if growth stagnates down the line). But the “Innovators” and “Early Adopters” will be there to invest and support the league. Most importantly the league will already have reached the opinion leaders and established a reputation.

What’s the takeaway from this? Lohman’s analysis of the marketing potential of the new women’s league wasn’t too far off the mark if the league decides that they don’t want their critical mass to come from the youth soccer fold. Looking at the population that makes up the bulk of the USWNT’s fan tribute tour crowds, that might be a hasty decision though. The new league needs to figure out who their ideal audience for the league is. The beauty of sociological theory is that it can typically apply to any group of people from the entire worldwide population to a neighborhood of people. Once they figure out who their audience is they need to make sure the league draws in the opinion leaders of that/those group(s) and that they make a good impression. Word of mouth and grassroots efforts will do a large bulk of the work from there.

Heath’s minutes per game shows that she was crucially important at UNC. Put in comparison, in this season, only Morgan’s stats, O’Hara, Solo, and Wambach’s adjusted stats can compare to the amount that Heath was utilized at UNC. As someone who was part of 3 championships that indicates how crucial of a fulcrum Heath was for their team and perhaps why Sundhage believed Heath could transform into the future of the USWNT. On the USWNT Heath has outperformed her college performance. The difference is a little less impressive when looking at the adjusted numbers but they still either hover right around her college productivity or have improved since then. Given that she was taken 1st in the 2010 WPS draft even with those less flashy numbers and the fact that she has improved shows that she is just beginning to reach her potential; playing with great targets and in an even better environment doesn’t hurt either (even when considering the great atmosphere at UNC with 3 championships).

Morgan is utilized more in today’s USWNT than her college team which is rather remarkable given that she wasn’t on a team of superstars (although was pulled away from regular college play to national team duty). Her statistics are much better now possibly due to better service, better play, or even the fact that she no longer is the only threat to score. Most impressive is the fact that she has cut her assist rate in half. Once again this probably reflects both an improvement in her own play as well as the fact that she now has some of the best targets to assist.

Given their roles today it is rather surprising that Cheney had a better strike and assist rate than Morgan in college. Her strike rate was the best of all of the college players in this study at practically a goal per 90 minutes. While that has declined on the USWNT, her assist rate (which was already one of the best during college) has gotten better and was already one of the best in college (although if you do not consider the first 2 blowout games her numbers are much more pedestrian). Her strike rate decrease particularly this year may reflect the fact that she now occupies a role that is further from the goal and has somewhat changed her focus to creating goals rather than scoring them.

We’re under the assumption that all strikers should have an amazingly prolific strike rate and get upset when they do not score constantly. Rodriguez led her team to a national championship and yet had a fairly pedestrian production rate throughout her college career. Rodriguez’s critics may be surprised to see that her USWNT strike rate over 4 years is actually better than at USC – with or without those blowout games from earlier this year. Are her 2012 statistics inflated due to the blowout wins? Yes, but her aggregate numbers show the more consistent general trend. The way that Rodriguez plays is quite possibly just how she plays and perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised when she does so.

It is difficult to draw conclusions about Leroux since there is very limited information for her due to the fact that she has not played more than one USWNT season. Her college aggregate minutes per assist statistic however suggests that she is a true forward as one who scores goals and not one who creates them (her current season on the USWNT also supports this theory).

O’Reilly had the best assist rate by far in college and her minutes per goal was also consistently one of the best (it should be noted that O’Reilly is a bit older than the other players and even within a few years there has been increasingly more parity in the college game). However, this also reflects the fact that she played as a forward up until Sundhage instituted her as a flank midfielder. Unfortunately US Soccer’s website only has statistics up until 2009 so comparing O’Reilly’s UNC numbers to her current numbers is not exactly comparing apples to apples. However if you compare her cumulative USWNT rate to Heath’s you’ll find that they are rather similar thereby demonstrating the effect that one’s position plays in their statistics.

What’s the general take away from all of this? In general it shows that often even the best players from college can improve but also that when you have more talented players around, the goals and assists are more likely to be spread around as well. This is certainly the case for the minutes as only Morgan plays more now than she did in college. Mostly though I think it gives us a broader perspective to understand each player’s play in the context of what they were capable of producing back in college and, as always, some fun factoids.

Methodology Notes

I compiled statistics listed on each player’s college athletics’ website. Some schools (such as UNC) provided more detailed statistics while others were rather random in when they provided stats and when they didn’t. For those schools that did not provide season-long statistics I compiled their statistics by pulling the relevant information from the game-by-game summary statistics. Occasionally these statistics did not include the minutes played in which case I used that season’s average minutes per game. (If this exercise taught me anything it was that institutions need to be more consistent in their sports reporting.)

The adjusted USWNT statistics do not include the games against the Dominican Republic and Guatemala. While there are sometimes blowouts in the college game never did I see a 14-0 or 13-0 drubbing. I chose to keep the 8-0 win over Costa Rica in because even just as recently as in the NCAA playoffs there are games with 9-2 scorelines.

One caveat you should keep in the back of your mind is the fact that the college game is different from the international game. There are unlimited substitutions allowed (although you cannot enter in the same period that you have been subbed out) and the golden goal in overtime exists. While these are important facts to keep in mind I believe the general conclusions garnered from 4 seasons of play are still applicable.

I chose to examine the younger players because a.) colleges just started posting game statistics on their websites semi-recently, b.) NCAA play has become increasingly competitive of late, c.) these players are more likely to still play like they did in college. I’m only looking at players who still occupy a similar position as they did in college hence the exclusion of O’Hara (it would not be fair to say that O’Hara’s productivity has declined since she no longer occupies a forward role). Part 1 of this post is about general observations when comparing college and USWNT performances. Check back for Part 2 for a more individual by individual breakdown of college versus USWNT statistics. More detailed notes on methodology are included at the end of the second post.

Overview of College Performance:

Looking at the graph above you can see how these select players performed in college. Things that stick out to me: O’Reilly was consistently productive with the lowest minute per statistic almost all four years, Cheney and Leroux (both at UCLA) took similar ups and downs during their college careers although they were 2 years apart, Morgan consistently got better, Rodriguez has always been less productive than the other forwards, as a midfielder Heath’s productivity was always less than the forwards but by the end was quite similar to Rodriguez’s, and Heath and Rodriguez both had sophomore slumps but Heath rebounded from hers to get better and better her last two years while Rodriguez never reached her freshmen year productivity. Other broader observations show that there might be a threshold for how productive a college player can be as O’Reilly’s statistics did not fluctuate very much and even when Cheney and Morgan’s productivity improved their senior year they were all grouped around the same minutes per statistic (around 60 minutes per contribution). The senior year statistics’ only range 59 minutes whereas the average of the previous years was 132 minutes which shows how the gap between the players got smaller by the end of the players’ careers. All of this is interesting but what I most wanted to achieve by looking at these numbers was if players were capable of improving over a 4 year period. Heath, Morgan, Cheney, and Leroux all ended their careers with better minutes per contribution than they started, which indicates to me a greater possibility for continued improvement within their own play even when not accounting for what players surround them.

Comparing College Performance to USWNT Performance:

In the graph above I’ve normalized each player’s minutes per contribution statistic by making their college statistic 100 and their 2012 and aggregate USWNT statistics  are displayed as percentages of their college statistics. You can see from this graphic that everyone except Cheney and O’Reilly has improved on the USWNT. Once I show you their individual statistics this isn’t nearly as dramatic as this graph shows but it is worth noting that even some of the best college players improve once they get to play with equally or more talented players.

Aside from the fact that these players have improved in the USWNT you can clearly see that almost all players had better than average season this year. Heath and Morgan’s better than average but not drastically different rates reflects the fact that the bulk of their minutes and goals and assists have come from this past year. But it also suggests that their rates are more sustainable over the long run since their previous rates were generally around the same range as their current 2012 minutes per contributions. Sundhage, rewarded Cheney for her performance last year with more time and a more important role. But in this more central role Cheney has failed to produce assists and goals. This does not mean that she has not played well just that her traditional stats have dropped off, quite possibly due to further restrained role on the field.

Remember to check back on Tuesday for the second part of this post with more detailed statistics on individual players.

My last post delved into how to examine which players have the best offensive showings when traditional stats such as assists and goals do not show it. We’ll use those measures again in this post to look at offensive productivity. Additionally I’ve mentioned how difficult it can be to measure defensive quality. That challenge is tackled a little bit in this post as well.

The chart above shows how many passes a player contributed to a chance/earning a corner, how many chances they were involved in, and how many “good scoring chances” (those in or around the box) a player was involved in. In the parentheses are the “minutes per” statistic (e.g. minutes per pass in chance/earned corner). These numbers show just how offensively productive Heath was. She led in every single category by pure count. When going off of the minutes per statistics her ranking drops off a bit but this is largely because she played all 90 minutes (we’ll look at this later).

Boxx’s effect on the game is also shown in these numbers. She was only on the pitch for the second half and yet she ranks 5^th in passes leading up to a chance and 2^nd when looking at minutes per passes. Her numbers are even more impressive when compared to Lloyd’s numbers as she replaced Lloyd at halftime. Other notables include fellow second half substitutes O’Reilly and Buehler.

After Lisa DeVanna’s goal the USWNT seemed to jolt awake as it often does. Prior to the goal, they were averaging around a chance per 6 minutes. After the goal, they boosted that to over twice that rate with 23 chances for the remaining 57 minutes. The thing about these statistics about involvement in chances is that even if one player makes a magnificent pass, if the subsequent passes do not lead to a chance then it does not matter. In this way these measures both examine individual performance as well as team performance. The entire team lifted their performance after that goal so each individual’s performance also reflects this improvement.

Each of the three statistics shows this trend of improvement so I just decided to go with the “Minutes per Chances Involved In” statistic. After the DeVanna goal everyone’s productivity picked up. But that was just for 12 minutes. And as coaches, players, and commentators will always tell you, the period after a goal has been scored is the most dangerous for an equalizer as the other team will press for the equalizer. I’ll direct your attention to the numbers in red. Both Heath and O’Hara became more involved after the goal (Heath was already tied with Wambach and Morgan for second most involved player) but even more impressively they continued to improve in the second half. Every player that stayed on for the second half bettered their pre-goal minutes per statistic but only Heath and O’Hara got even better than that pressurized 12 minutes.

While I’m sure that they did pick up their own play they also benefited greatly from the second half substitutes, particularly those that came on at halftime. You’ll notice that 3 out of the 4 halftime subs rank higher than those that were subbed out (seems that the coaches know what they’re doing, even if fans like to moan and groan about their decisions). That Heath statistic is even more impressive when you look at her minutes per passes towards a chance statistic which goes from 11 pre-goal, to 4 post-goal, to 2.81 in the second half, and impressively 2.1 for the 21 minutes after Buehler, Mitts, Boxx, and O’Reilly are subbed on (prior to Wambach being subbed off). Boxx’s minutes per passes towards a chance statistic for this period is also impressive at 2.63.

You’ll notice that I have not addressed Cheney’s numbers yet despite the fact that she is ranked in the top 2 or 3 every time. You might also remember that the commentators did not mention what a great game she was having or how effective she was being. I’d argue that was because she was outshone offensively by Heath and defensively by Boxx (she was also somewhat outshone defensively by Heath).

*Lloyd and Cheney seem to both struggle with figuring out their roles when they play with one another. I did too. So I put both of them at defensive midfield to see what it would show.

The table above shows players’ contributions towards turnover counts. These numbers have been summed up so if a player contributes 2 turnovers (either by giving a bad pass or being dispossessed after receiving it) but recovers 2 turnovers they would have a score of 0. Also I only counted turnovers if they occurred in the defensive half or led to a breakaway opportunity. In almost every situation the second half player, whether it was a substitute or the same player, did better, further supporting my belief that the second half substitutes made a huge difference. The exceptions would be in center midfield with Cheney’s turnover rating worsening in the second half. The number that should pop out to you is Boxx’s +10 rating. Within one half she had a better rating than anyone else. The closest players to her were Heath with +1 and +5 to equal +6 over the whole game and O’Hara with +1 and +4 for +5 over the whole game. This, is what makes Boxx the difference maker.

So what happened to Cheney? She wasn’t noticed in the first half when she was offensively and defensively productive and then her turnover rating declined but her offensive productivity continued in the second half? Once again, despite our best efforts, we find ourselves judging players’ performances based on the team’s performance. As a team the USWNT recovered/forced turnovers 12 times in the first half but gave it away 16 times. In the second half they forced 35 turnovers and only committed 12. (Why would they have to recover so many balls if they were committing so fewer turnovers? In the second half turnovers or change in possession occurred mainly in the final third as a result of offensive opportunities and so don’t count towards this turnover count.) Also there may be something to be said about the offensive center midfielder position as both Lloyd and Cheney had the same turnover rating when in that position.

Long story short, Boxx and Heath were the players of the match, just as the fans said. Heath was impressively productive on the offensive end and above average on the defensive end and Boxx was ridiculous on the defensive end and pretty good on the offensive end. Honorable mentions go to O’Hara and Cheney as well as the first 4 subs. Personally, I’d like to see what would happen if the lineup that started the second half started tonight, although I doubt that will happen. Regardless, tonight’s matchup should be a fun one to watch and try as I might I know that its sentimental value is greater than any statistical one that might come out of it.

In the table below a key play on the ball is defined as a pass within the possession that leads up to the goal. The number of goals involved in is also included to account for the fact that players may be involved in the same play multiple times.

*Rodriguez, Sauerbrunn, and Mitts were not directly involved in any of the Olympic goals and therefore are not included in the table above.

I do not think that anyone would argue with the idea that the US team is the deepest and strongest in their attack, more specifically their forwards and outside midfielders. The stats reflect this. Rapinoe, Heath, Wambach, and Morgan all had great tournaments and every single USWNT goal scored during the Olympics was either assisted and/or scored by one of them. Read that last part again. Every single USWNT goal scored during the Olympics was either assisted and/or scored by Rapinoe, Heath, Wambach, or Morgan.1 That is amazing. But again does not give credit to those players who may not have played the final pass but certainly played an important pass in the lead-up to the goal. In this regard Rapinoe, Heath, Wambach, and Morgan were also all involved in the most goals and contributed the most on the ball key plays in the lead up to goals.

Besides the quartet of Wambach, Morgan, Heath, and Rapinoe (I think I’ll be needing a nickname for them soon), another player’s stats are particularly impressive. O’Hara was involved in 6 different goals. In fact out of the 7 possession-oriented goals scored (involving 5 or more passes), O’Hara was involved in 5 of them. The US coaching staff’s decision to move her to left back has never looked so good. Additionally, while the US side didn’t seem to suffer too much with the absence of Boxx, the fact that she was involved in both of the goals she was on the pitch for in combination with the fact that Cheney was only involved in 3 shows just how much the USWNT relies on Boxx to maintain possession in the midfield. Unfortunately that statistic also shows the difficulty Cheney had in playing in that center midfielder role. Not to be denied is how Lloyd stepped up to be involved in 6 of the 16 goals serving to be a key cog in the USWNT offense.

Teamwise the numbers reflect the USWNT’s dominance on set pieces and counterattacks as the median amount of passes leading to a goal was 2.5 and the average was 3.25. The desire to score goals every time a player receives a ball (minus the second half of the North Korea game) is clear when you consider the fact that 4 goals were scored after just one pass and this is not including set piece goals.

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1 As commenter “Beth” noted, the bolded statement could also replace Heath with Leroux and be accurate. The point I was trying to emphasize was the continued strong play throughout the games by these four players as well as their strong combination play (hence the “AND/or”). 6 of the 16 Olympic goals were assisted AND scored by a pair of those players. If you count the unassisted olimpico and pk goals that brings the total to 8 of 16, meaning that half of the USWNT’s Olympic goals were a direct result of strong combination or individual play by those four players. Even if you consider the players that earned the corner or penalty kick leading up to those scores, you’ll see that Wambach, Morgan, Rapinoe, and Heath were instrumental.

The pressure clearly is a factor in the USWNT’s performance. Given their ability to put balls into the goal, finishing is no longer as sharp as it was previously this year. This can be most clearly seen with Morgan’s current scoring rate. Outside of this tournament Morgan was scoring a goal every 64 minutes. So far Morgan in the Olympics, Morgan has only scored twice and hasn’t scored since the first game making her rate drop to one goal per 167 minutes. It’s not only Morgan who is producing at a lower rate, the entire team is feeling the pressure. Before they scored a goal every 21 minutes, now it’s every 36. Still a great clip but a clear drop off. (But if you don’t count the games against the Dominican Republic and Guatemala the scoring rate has only dropped from one goal per 30 minutes.)

Megan Rapinoe and Tobin Heath have embraced their starting roles with impressive confidence. Heath has doubled her assist rate from one assist per 161 minutes to one per 83. Although Rapinoe has not assisted or made a goal in the past two games, thanks to her superb first two games she has upped her production rate to one goal or assist every 70 minutes where as previously she would have to play nearly 2 full 90 minutes before producing a goal or assist. Morgan has also increased her assist rate from one every 134 minutes to one every 111 minutes, not as an impressive of an improvement but still significant.

I included Wambach’s scoring rate and Lloyd’s scoring rate not to show improvement but rather to show that it is not that much out of the ordinary. Morgan has taken the scoring load onto her own shoulders over the past 12 months so people have come to expect her to score. This means that the spotlight has somewhat shifted off of the traditional USWNT goal scorers. Morgan has dealt with this added pressure particularly on the field by apparently turning into the provider given her improved assist rate.

Going into the Olympics Sundhage continued to emphasize that the new starting XI featuring Heath and Rapinoe out wide was her best lineup. There were many skeptics but both players have proved their worth as the stats show. Furthermore O’Reilly’s previous assist rate was one every 114 minutes. So far in the tournament she has played 176 without an assist as well as missing two opportunities to score in the game against New Zealand. I doubt that Sundhage uses stats to determine her starting XI but it’s good to know that the stats reflect the performances and back up her decisions so far.