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REIMS, France – Monday night, US captain Alex Morgan and coach Jill Ellis were answering questions at a lively news conference just over 24 hours before the US met with Thailand in his first match of the World Cup. the Auguste-Delaune stadium.
After a few benign first few minutes, the room was moved when a reporter took the microphone and wondered how Morgan and the team were tackling the defense of their World Cup title 2015, "because," he noted, "in a few weeks could be the former world champions. "
"O.K.," said Morgan after a comical contemplative beat. "Thanks for that."
Ellis, sitting to the left of Morgan, burst out laughing: "A slightly negative tone on that one," she said.
Despite this, Morgan seemed to understand the implications of the question.
Being the defending champion inevitably brings pressure. Just as the ranking of the world's No. 1 team is synonymous with pressure. Just like being the world's biggest and most salable star, the pressure is strong. Watching the level of competition in women's football seemingly improving from day to day is putting pressure.
"It's been a long process," Ellis said of the four years since his team's victory at the last World Cup. "But I think the players we selected and our preparation were excellent."
Four years ago, the United States raised the World Cup trophy in Vancouver, to take flight Tuesday in northeastern France.
The first sign that the defense of their title could prove a complicated task appeared early, the following summer, in 2016, when the United States collapsed from the Olympics in the quarterfinals. It was the first time they came out of a major tournament and the first time the United States did not win medals at the Olympics. It stung.
"I never want to feel what I felt after this tournament," Morgan said last week.
While this defeat in Sweden symbolized one of the emotional weaknesses of the team's proud history, it also served as a wake-up call. The 2015 World Cup proved that the United States had vulnerabilities – "driving is not smooth," said Ellis about the tournament – and the Olympic Games quickly proved that teams were starting to take advantage of it.
So, Americans should also become more economical. This is how it started a period of experimentation, DIY and hearing, with growing pains and results from top to bottom and a lot of uncertainty.
For starters, Ellis changed the team's formation from 4-4-2 to 4-3-3, which highlighted the depth of the team.
She also doubled her tactical preparation – Morgan noted that some training sessions in the past few months had focused 80% on tactics – after realizing that other teams were becoming more sophisticated, with first and second third options to neutralize the Americans. attacks.
She has named, according to her estimate, nearly 60 new players in various training camps. (In the end, however, she chose a group that focused on the experience.With an average age of 29, the United States is the most aged in this tournament and 12 of the players are reservists from the team of 2015.)
The effectiveness of all this DIY will be put to the test over the next four weeks. The stakes are important for the team, whose revenues and the future of the professional and national teams will be affected by the result. The stakes for Ellis are therefore huge. And it's not fair to lift the trophy in his mind; Ellis' next contract with American football, which has to be renewed every four years, at the World Cup and Olympic cycle levels, will probably depend on the team's performance in France.
Ellis said that she welcomed the review.
The team, she noted recently, was already ranked # 1 in the world when she was hired in 2014. So the pressure – the overall weight of excellence and tradition in the long run, without forget a multi-year fight with American football that continues in the courts – has been incorporated into the job description.
"You realize that there is no room for error, and you can just wallow in or say," God, that's part of the job, and it's what I want to do, "and you take that as a really exciting challenge. ," she says.
More than 30 years ago, while Ellis was preparing to start her first coaching job as an assistant at North Carolina State, her father gave her a tip: He is not a coach unless he is fired.
Maybe he could have told him: you're not coaching until your old star starts you in the media.
Over the weekend, retired US goalkeeper Hope Solo, who has a long and complicated history with the team, designed some of his The brightest moments on the pitch and being at the center of some of his biggest controversies – have made a series of critical comments about Ellis' effectiveness as a BBC leader, who has engaged as a commentator for the World Cup.
Solo said that Ellis "was cracking under pressure" and revealed that she often refused to let the team's players watch a video of their defensive mistakes as she feared that it would not bother them. trust.
Ellis was asked Monday if she wanted to answer.
"Comments are comments," said Ellis. "Listen, I have the feeling in the last five years that I have made a lot of important decisions. I have processes to make those decisions and own those processes. "
Solo's remarks were another distraction. The focus, she said, would be internal.
"The pundits are out there," she said.
After the press conference, the entire team entered the stadium to inspect the pitch, a process that seemed to involve a lot of jokes and taking pictures. The players then headed to another field for a final training session before facing Thailand.
They said that they were eager to start their tournament. They knew that they had goals on their backs. The atmosphere was light.
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