- Productive year for the United States
- Have Olympic gold medal bid to come
- Proven winner calling the shots as coach
WHAT HAPPENED?
Having briefly slipped into reverse at the 2023 Women’s World Cup, the United States are looking to move through the gears once more. The current calendar year has already been a productive one, with W Gold Cup and SheBelieves Cup glory savoured, and there is a gold medal bid to come at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
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WHAT RODMAN SAID
Former Chelsea boss Hayes is now calling the shots ahead of a trip to Paris, as she settles into the most demanding of roles, and Rodman is looking forward to working with a proven winner. She has told Moving the Goalposts: “I just had known of her accomplishments and how great she was, and heard through other people, how successful and how good she is also just as a person … So I was really happy. I think the growth of the game and also having more women in this sport, I think is really cool. I’m very open minded and excited about the future and what there is to come with her, because we haven’t even scratched the surface I don’t think, and when she comes in I think it’s going to be pedal to the metal for sure.”
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Rodman has helped to get the USWNT back on the trophy trail, with the general consensus being that they have benefited as a collective from seeing a global crown snatched from their heads. Rodman added: “For us younger players in the World Cup that played a lot, like me and Soph [Smith], and [Emily] Fox and Naomi [Girma] … it tested us a lot. As a team you [have] got to figure out what’s going wrong quickly and we didn’t do that in the World Cup. So for me, I don’t look back at it in a bad way any more. I think I did closer to the loss and being sent home. But now I look at it happily, just because it was a great learning experience.”
WHAT NEXT?
Rodman is now accustomed to performing under pressure – a trait she appears to have inherited from her NBA legend father Dennis, who once played alongside Michael Jordan at the Chicago Bulls – and she will have an important role to play under Hayes despite being just 22 years of age.
