Christen Press celebrates her (ultimately) game-winning goal against Australia with teammate Lauren Holiday.
“The main thing I think about when I think about European soccer and my time in Sweden is that’s where I refell in love with the game. That’s where I found passion again and it is that passion that led me to the national team.” — Christen Press
Neil W. Blackmon
Following a thrilling if not convincing 3-1 win over Australia Tuesday night, the US Women’s National Team resumes play at the 2015 World Cup tonight when they take on Sweden (8PM ET, FOX). The nationally-televised match will see the Yanks take on their old coach, Pia Sundhage, who led the US to the World Cup Final in 2011 and Olympic Gold Medal finishes in both Beijing 2008 and London 2012. Sundhage left the US to take the job as manager of her native Sweden in September 2012. The Swedes enter the match ranked fifth in the FIFA World Rankings, and were the pre-tournament pick by many to win Group D.
They’ll enter Winnipeg Stadium tonight desperate, following an opening game draw with Nigeria that saw the Blågult look uncharacteristically sloppy with the ball and continuously vulnerable in defense. Fail to get at least a point against the United States, and the Swedes will face the troubling proposition of requiring a victory over Australia to assure themselves of safe passage into the Round of 16.
The Swedes are counting on Sundhage’s familiarity with her old team to be a significant advantage, the thinking of course who better to understand and exploit the US frailties than their former manager. In the run-up to Canada, Sundhage largely distanced herself from her old side, refusing to comment much on their form and even telling Equalizer Soccer’s Jeff Kassouf at one point that she hardly watched the team as they (by American standards) struggled through 2014. Sundhage had insisted she was focused on her side, one whose defense she had publicly criticized following the Algarve Cup and a pair of testy friendly results in April.
Pia had some remarks about some of her old players this week. But they were hardly news.
Sundhage’s refusal to address her old team ended this week. Sundhage told media that the US had issues, ones that weren’t simply related to a lack of imagination in attack or a lack of bite in the central midfield. They were genuine personality issues, and Sundhage had names. She told the world she thought Carli Lloyd was intense and difficult to coach, particularly when things weren’t going well. She said Abby Wambach was old and would largely be on the bench if she were still in charge. And she said Hope Solo was a train wreck off the field to the point of distraction.
None of it was earth-shattering stuff. In fact, a reasonable argument could be made that at least in soccer circles, everything she said was well-known. And perhaps, as a handful of writers suggested, it was just a colorful coach with a history of being open with the press being herself. “Pia being Pia,” nothing more. But US players appeared motivated by it when they addressed the media in Winnipeg yesterday.
“I plan to respond on the field,” Carli Lloyd, already a maelstrom of intensity without kerosene on the fire, told Grant Wahl. We’ll see if the remarks feature in the postgame discussion, no matter what happens.
The US shouldn’t need motivation to play one of the world’s top sides. The Swedes have bona fide global star power in striker Lotta Schelin, who has scored 80 goals for Sweden in her career and is coming off one the best club seasons of her career with Lyon in France.
Nilla Fischer had a howler against Nigeria Tuesday, but is on the shortlist in any “best defender in the world” conversation, and is likely more than capable of shutting down Abby Wambach, who looked off the pace and tired against Australia on opening night.
Captain Caroline Seger gives Sweden their own Carli Lloyd, a player who can dictate proceedings in the midfield and create.
Talent and desperation are often tough to defeat on the World Cup stage, and the Swedes have both, as well as a coach who is familiar with the American weaknesses.
Christen Press addresses the media in New York City at USWNT World Cup media day.
For their part, the Americans claim they are familiar with the Swedes as well.
““We have unique soccer ties with Sweden, with Pia being our former coach, and Tony (Gustavsson) being our current assistant with six of our girls having played in the Swedish league”, winger/forward Christen Press told TYAC before the tournament. “We know the girls, we respect them, some are my friends. I would say two or three of the girls are my close friends, I text them regularly. So I think it is going to be a special game that comes from admiration and respect. I think that will make it more fierce and more intense and it will be a rivalry game.”
But does the rivalry and playing against Pia provide extra motivation? Press said that was hard to evaluate.
“I won’t say I want to win it more than any other game in the World Cup. We’ve prepared our whole life for these games, but there is an extra added little ‘oomph’ because we know the girls so well.”
The main thing, Press says, is how familiar the teams are with each other. “They know our strengths, and we know their strengths, and it is a totally different game of chess.”
Press is in a credible position to comment on Swedish soccer as one of a handful of US players who have played in the soccer-crazed Scandanavian country professionally.
When the WPS folded, Press had a limited amount of time to find a club in Europe before the transfer window closed. Fortunately, she had a contact and another contact and landed at Kopparbergs/Göteborg FC, and then later at Tyresö FF, a club outside of Stockholm where she played for current US assistant Tony Gustavsson. A Hermann Trophy winner as college soccer’s best player at Stanford, Press says the pressure of playing results-oriented soccer took a toll on her psyche.
“I arrived in Sweden a bit broken. I lost perspective at home,” Press told TYAC before the tournament. “I felt like if we lost (at Stanford) then I let my whole team down, I let my whole school down. And we lost twice in the final. And the weight of it was crushing me. That, with also trying to make the national team, never being called in-all the frustration was too much. I couldn’t’ think about the game or where I was in my development. All I thought about was titles, and I think that muddled my perspectives.”
That changed at Kopparbergs/Göteborg FC and at Tyresö, Press said. Free from the pressures of results, and in a culture that simply embraced and loved the game, Press flourished. “I think that my experience in Europe was special for me. It came at the right moment of my life and it is was what I needed, as a footballer and a human being,” Press said. “The main thing I think about when I think about European soccer and my time in Sweden is that’s where I refell in love with the game. That’s where I found passion again and it is that passion that led me to the national team.”
Indeed, before Tyresö, Press had not featured with the senior national team, an oddity for a player with such a decorated collegiate pedigree.She was one of Pia Sundhage’s alternates for the 2012 Olympics, but didn’t feature. Finally, in 2013, she earned her first cap under Tom Sermanni, and scored twice for the US in her first game, against Scotland. She’s tallied 20 more times in 46 appearances since, including the game-winner against Australia Tuesday.
It hasn’t all been smooth-sailing with the national team, however. Press told TYAC she’s struggled adjusting to a role on the wing after spending her life and the best years at the club level in Sweden playing the role of the traditional number nine. Adjusting to Jill Ellis’s role for her, withdrawn and wide in the midfield, has been a challenge she’s only recently been able to embrace.
“I think that I definitely saw it as a challenge at the beginning.” Press said. “I didn’t’ think that was where I was going to be able to show my best. I think until I got a little bit more comfortable this year, I didn’t realize or appreciate that every role on a team is so unique. You could be a 9 one team and play a different formation on another team and it’s a different job. I really felt like I had mastered the 9 in the formation I was playing when I was in Sweden, and I had worked so hard to master it, that it was a little sad for me to let it go. But as soon as I did I realized that I have a whole bag of tools, and I have all these strengths, and while maybe I’ll have to put a different combination together, but I am capable and am the same player and I can do the same things to impact winning from a different starting spot.”
In fact, Press acknowledged it wasn’t until she scored a terrific goal against France in the Algarve Cup final (below) that she realized she could do what Ellis was asking her to do.
“I think it was (a turning point),” Press told TYAC. “I think because when you are playing in the lower position, you have to work so hard just to get in a scoring position, whereas as a forward you wait just for the one chance a game to score. I like the work, I like getting back on defense, I like being held accountable, but I didn’t like being out of breath, exhausted and tired when the chance came. So I think when I scored the France goal I realized I could score from anywhere on the field.”
Press utilized her pace and innate ability to carve out space in threatening areas with her movement Tuesday night against Australia, and it is an ability that will matter to the US as the tournament continues. Fortunately, it is a talent that is again matched with a constant smile and passion, from a girl who attended to the Rose Bowl World Cup Final in 1999 with “face painted and hair in like six buns” to today. The US can thank Sweden for that, even if not directly.
“I owe Sweden a lot. Two and a half of the best years of my life,” Press says. Playing abroad might not be for everybody, but it was the perfect move for Press.
“I knew for me that I needed to get out of here (the United States). The American sports culture was completely…I had lost my way and my love for the game. It felt completely focused on results and I was completely focused on results. I felt like I wasn’t good enough. I went there, I had that freedom to play for myself, to learn soccer and to reignite my passion.”
Tonight, in a World Cup, Press will get to play the country who reignited her fire. That’s special.
Neil W. Blackmon is Co-Founder of The Yanks Are Coming. He can be reached at nwblackmon@gmail.com and you can follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.