The U.S. women’s national team lost back-to-back games for the first time in five years after an uninspiring 2-0 loss to a second-choice Spain team in Pamplona on Tuesday.
Laia Codina, in her debut for the senior Spain national team, opened the scoring in the 39th minute after the U.S. twice failed to clear a corner kick that dropped in the box. Real Madrid star Esther Gonzalez added the dagger 18 minutes from time with a sweet volley after floating in between three U.S. defenders unmarked.
With the 2-0 loss after falling to England day earlier, the U.S. women have suffered back-to-back defeats while conceding multiple goals for the first time since 2001.
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Rapid reaction
1. USWNT panic comes early this cycle
U.S. head coach Vlatko Andonovski said that he wanted to schedule these England and Spain matches for the October window to work through some of the team’s issues well ahead of the 2023 World Cup. Two losses five days apart exposed plenty of them.
They mark the first back-to-back losses for the U.S. women since the 2017 SheBelieves Cup, when they fell 1-0 to England in New Jersey three days before an embarrassing 3-0 loss to France in Washington, D.C., that officially ended Jill Ellis’ 3-5-2 experiment.
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This time around, it was a loss to Spain that followed one to England (both away from home), and the combination of poor performances with the context of Spain fielding a second-choice team, makes this a low point — at minimum since last year’s Olympics, and perhaps in Andonovski’s tenure.
It is, however, a familiar feeling, if U.S. fans are looking for a point of optimism. In 2015, the U.S. got worked over in a 2-0 loss to France in Lorient to open the calendar year. That friendly answered personnel questions and is an overlooked element of the team’s 2015 World Cup triumph. Four years later, it was the same story: a 3-1 loss in Le Havre to open the year, and eventually the U.S. won the World Cup — including a quarterfinal victory over France in Paris.
