Catarina Macario is worth the price of admission for her first USWNT game in Chester

Vlatko Andonovski wasn’t being arrogant, he insisted. But the U.S. women’s soccer team’s manager had something to say, and he wasn’t going to hold it back.

“I do believe,” he said of Catarina Macario, “she’s on a good path to be one of the best players in the world.”

For most fans of the U.S. women’s soccer team, such rhetoric is barely worthy of Twitter. But for Andonovski, who’s often intentionally low-key on camera, it was as close to a sports talk radio moment as he’s had.

The player for whom U.S. fans, coaches, scouts, and media waited years to see has fully arrived, and she’s in scintillating form. The Brazil-born Macario (she moved to San Diego with her family in 2011) has 18 goals and seven assists in 26 games this season for her club, French superpower Lyon, including five goals and two assists in eight Champions League contests — and some of the goals have been spectacular.

The former Stanford star, now 22, also has three goals in her last two national team games, including one in Saturday’s 9-1 rout of Uzbekistan, and two outrageous strikes against Iceland on Feb. 23. In 16 total appearances so far, she has six goals and two assists.

» READ MORE: U.S. women’s soccer team downs Uzbekistan

“Cat’s just a complete footballer,” said Lindsey Horan, a teammate for club and country. She will likely share the field with Macario again on Tuesday when the U.S. hosts Uzbekistan at Subaru Park (7 p.m., ESPN2 and Univision’s ViX streaming service).

“And the coolest part,” Horan continued, “is she’s young and she wants to learn, and I think she takes great pride in that. There’s going to be a lot to come from Cat, and she’s already doing amazing things — scoring some of the sickest goals I’ve seen, and doing it on the biggest stage, like our last Champions League game.”

Notably, Macario has achieved these feats playing two positions. With Lyon, she alternates between an attacking midfield role behind superstar striker Ada Hegerberg, and a forward position. Macario was in the former position for the game Horan mentioned, a 3-1 Champions League quarterfinal win over Juventus. Macario scored in both games of the series, a 2-1 loss in Italy and the win a week later at home.

With the national team, Macario has played almost exclusively on the front line, but with the same game — as much creation as finishing.

This is one of the main tactical changes that Andonovski has made since last year’s Olympics, and one of the evolutions that he was hired three years ago to make right now.

» READ MORE: Catarina Macario has been a big-time prospect for a long time

Historically, the U.S. women’s team funneled its attacks through wingers who created on the flanks and served up passes for target forwards. The names are etched in national team legend: Megan Rapinoe, Tobin Heath, Heather O’Reilly, Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, Christen Press, and many more.

Andonovski’s teams can still play that way, and sometimes they do. But as he prepares his players for this summer’s Concacaf W Championship, a qualifying tournament for both next year’s World Cup and the 2024 Olympics, Andonovski has added another weapon to his team’s arsenal.

With Macario up top in the middle, the wingers are now shooters as much as they are creators, and sometimes more. Sophia Smith, who scored a hat trick as the starter at right wing on Saturday, is a striker for her club team, the Portland Thorns — and is a striker naturally, plenty of people would say.

Mallory Pugh, who started on the left wing Saturday, had a goal and three assists. She was a true winger early in her career, but has grown into a more-rounded forward for the U.S. and the Chicago Red Stars.

Their backups on this squad, Margaret Purce (Gotham FC) on the right flank and Trinity Rodman (Washington Spirit) on the left, also have pedigree as natural shooters and finishers.

» READ MORE: A deeper look at the U.S. roster for Tuesday's game

Some of you might be thinking to yourselves: Hold on, those veterans scored bags full of goals, too. Shouldn’t they be given another chance to show their stuff in Andonovski’s system?

Andonovski has signaled repeatedly that a time will come when they return. But the time hasn’t come yet, and there’s just one FIFA window left in June before the July tournament. Right now is the new era’s moment.

While they succeed at that, the young players have yet to come close to their predecessors’ celebrity status. Star power in American women’s soccer isn’t earned the way it is on the men’s side, where the young prospects often draw bigger headlines than incumbents — even the big ones starring in Europe.

In the women’s game, the veterans have the most star power. Press, Heath, Morgan, and Rapinoe (and Lloyd in Philly, of course) — command more attention with one Instagram post than any goal or assist by Macario, Purce, and the rest.

That was shown during the SheBelieves Cup, when the 27,000-seat Dignity Health Sports Park in suburban Los Angeles had more than 10,000 empty seats watching Macario lead a 5-0 win over New Zealand. Had Press and Morgan been there, those seats probably would likely have been filled, even amid the pandemic.

As of Sunday afternoon, about 10,000 tickets had been sold for Tuesday’s game at Subaru Park. The U.S. women haven’t played in the northeast U.S. since their Olympics sendoff games last July, and haven’t played in the Philly area since setting an attendance record at Lincoln Financial Field in August 2019.

This game has the potential to draw fans from not just the Philly area. They’ll come from New York and D.C., too, with three Gotham players and six Spirit players on the 22-woman squad. And there’s Rose Lavelle, too, as electric a playmaker and personality as the U.S. has ever had. (Good luck to opposing coaches who have to game-plan against her and Macario at the same time.)

Will the sorts of fans who want to watch Press, Heath, Morgan, or Rapinoe show up? That remains to be seen. But it’s not being arrogant to say Macario is worth the price of admission, and the rest of the team is too.

» READ MORE: The USWNT's new era of players is more diverse than its predecessors