Fans have been anticipating a rematch of the 2019 women’s World Cup final ever since the group stage draw was made, but the United States and the Netherlands won’t be playing out anything close to a copy of that match. The U.S. has undergone some notable changes, but the Oranje barely resemble the runners-up from four years ago, and will face the Americans with a completely different gameplan.
Nevertheless, it’s still something of a grudge match with Group E supremacy on the line.
“They are incredibly organized,” USWNT striker Alex Morgan said of the Netherlands this week. “They have a very expansive shape, in the attack. They don’t give you much space at all to receive and turn or get off the dribble. They’re very quick to close down space…Defenders are very physical, very aggressive and pressing what’s in front of them, so I know I’m going to have a lot of pressure on my back.”
Here’s your crash course ahead of the headline match of the USWNT’s group stage slate.
Becky Sauerbrunn and Vivianne Miedema will miss the rematch due to injury (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
What’s changed for the Netherlands?
The biggest difference from the team we saw in the 2019 final comes from a change necessitated by injury — The Netherlands’ star attacker Vivianne Miedema has missed out on this World Cup due to an ACL injury. She’s usually a center forward, but in the 2019 final, Miedema was moved from center forward to central attacking midfield in an attempt to get her on the ball as often as possible.
No matter which position Miedema plays, she’s been the focal point of the Netherlands attack since she was a teenager. In her absence, Dutch manager Andries Jonker has opted not to find a replacement at all, setting set up his team in a 3-5-2 formation with no true striker. Lieke Martens and Lineth Beerensteyn, two players who operate on the wings when Miedema is available and for their club teams, have been partnered together in a bit of a makeshift front 2. But late Wednesday local time, Jonker confirmed Beerensteyn will not be available against the U.S. due to an ankle injury.
Jonker appears to be following a philosophy of finding a coherent way to get his best players on the field, but the jury’s still out on whether or not a move away from the 4-3-3 the Dutch are well-known for is going to produce positive results. The Netherlands got the job done in its opener against Portugal, securing all three points, but the Oranje scored just one lone goal (off a set piece), and generated only 12 shots in that game.
The USWNT was a bit more convincing in its opener, a 3-0 win against Vietnam, but still has plenty of questions to answer.
Sophia Smith vs. Sherida Spitse
Dutch captain Sherida Spitse is the Netherlands’ all-time most-capped player with 213 appearances, and she’s still a key part of the team at 33 years old. But with Spitse perhaps having lost a step of pace, while younger players have improved over the past 4 years, the Netherlands now has some better options at her natural position in midfield.
In response, Jonker has made the bold decision to shift Spitse to the right center back role in his back three, making her a bit less responsible for covering quick accelerations in space on counter-attacks as she would be in a defensive midfield role. Playing in this role also gets her more time and space on the ball to progress the ball from deep, which is arguably her best quality. Spitse completed 36 of 44 passes against Portugal, including a team-leading 11 completed passes into the final third.
Center backs do have to do some defending, though, and Spitse’s going to face a massive challenge in that area if she gets the start against the USWNT. She’ll likely end up in a lot of 1-v-1 battles with Sophia Smith, probably the last player on the planet that you want to face off against if you’re a player whose primary weakness is a lack of pace.
Smith is an expert at running the channels between fullbacks and center backs, as she showed on the USWNT’s opening goal against Vietnam.
SOPHIA SMITH SCORES THE @USWNT’S FIRST GOAL IN THE 2023 FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/7zBnGYfhQh
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 22, 2023
Having someone with the pace and dribbling skills of Smith regularly running at Spitse is a complete nightmare for the Netherlands, so much so that I have to wonder if Jonker will change up his lineup for this game. It’s such an obvious matchup for the USWNT to exploit that it’s hard to stomach letting it happen, unless the Netherlands think they have a very good way to deny Smith the ball in the first place.
Will either team change midfield shape?
Against less-talented and more inexperienced opponents, both the USWNT and Netherlands have opted for setups featuring a single defensive midfielder with two midfielders pushed forward ahead of them. If neither team changes shape to deal with their opponents’ attacking midfield threat, we’re going to get an extremely entertaining match. If both teams shift to a double pivot, moving one of their midfielders into a deeper role, we might end up watching something that’s more of a staring contest than a soccer match.
I don’t know how either team will start, but I wouldn’t be surprised if both teams change between single and double-pivot midfields throughout the match depending on how individual players are performing or the state of the game. This could be a continuous chess match that decides the match itself, and I’m not sure if these managers are closer to Magnus Carlsen or to me blundering my queen by move 10.
The USWNT doesn’t need to make a personnel change to switch between formations — Lindsey Horan regularly shifts between a holding and box-to-box midfield role — but the Netherlands probably should. The team didn’t get punished defensively by Portugal for having attacking midfielders Jill Roord and Danielle van de Donk on the pitch at the same time ahead of Jackie Groenen at defensive midfield, but it’s easy to envision that group getting overrun by the Americans. The Oranje would probably be well served by dropping one of those more-attacking players for defensive midfielder Damaris Egurrola and moving Groenen into a more flexible midfield role.
Can the USWNT get more from its fullbacks?
Left back Crystal Dunn and right back Emily Fox weren’t exactly needed to do any ball progression work against Vietnam. Center backs Julie Ertz and Naomi Girma were granted lanes to move the ball forward, and they took them, rarely involving their fullbacks in buildup play. This played out to the eye and in the stats; Ertz had twice as many progressive passes plus carries as Dunn and Fox combined.
The lanes available to the USWNT in buildup are likely to be quite a bit different in this game. Vietnam played with a lone center forward, but the Netherlands look likely to play with two up front, and should have regular 2-v-2 pressure on the American central defenders. Expect the Netherlands to filter the ball wide during the Americans’ build-up, then try to trap Dunn and Fox and force them to either go long or go backward.
This will put a lot of pressure on the American fullbacks to make difficult plays in tight spaces in order to advance the ball and start dangerous attacks. Dunn and Fox are undoubtedly capable of this, but they didn’t get a chance to show it in the opener, mostly because they weren’t asked to.
If the USWNT are going to record a comfortable win against the Netherlands, the positions of its fullbacks and center backs on the above graph probably need to be flipped.
| _(Top photo: Ulrik Pedersen/DeFodi Images via Getty Images | Graphics: Jeff Rueter)_ |
