Sophia Smith’s killer scoring instincts makes her must-see TV with the USWNT

WASHINGTON — Sophia Smith’s name and skills are plenty familiar in the women’s soccer world by now, thanks to her success with the U.S. women’s soccer team and the Portland Thorns.

But the 22-year-old forward’s exploits still have the special sheen that comes with watching a young phenom’s rise to stardom. It’s especially true when she scores goals, as she has done 14 times this year for her club and nine times for her country.

It’s not just that Smith has vision, speed and a willingness to get into the ugly parts on the field. She also has a devastating ruthlessness about her, and this trait stands out the most.

She showed it again Saturday when she scored twice in the Americans’ 4-0 win over Nigeria in Kansas City, Kan.

On the first, Smith spotted an opponent’s errant backward pass and took off like a rocket from the center of Nigeria’s half. In the time it took for the ball to go up into the air and back down, Smith split two Nigerian defenders and left a third in her wake, sprinting to the ball and corralling it as it bounced and rolled forward. She kept it under her spell as she kept running, and with a defender on her back steered a sliding shot inside the far post.

It was sensational in real time, and a replay on the TV broadcast from an overhead camera made it look even better.

» READ MORE: Sophia Smith’s two goals lead U.S. women’s soccer team to 4-0 win over Nigeria

The second goal was a classic poacher’s finish after a sequence of team play. The ball went up the middle from Andi Sullivan to Alex Morgan, then to Emily Fox on the left. As Smith watched Fox receive the ball, she held her run to stay onside, then hit the jets as Fox reached the 18-yard line. The pass was on the money, and Smith needed just one instinctive touch to score.

U.S. manager Vlatko Andonovski first watched Smith when she was a 16-year-old at a youth tournament in Kansas City, where he coached the NWSL team in the city where he has long lived. He didn’t know her name yet, but it wouldn’t be long before he did.

“I want to say that it’s easy, or I want to say that we get it right all the time,” Andonovski said, words that any scout could live by. “But you know, you see something, you feel something. You do it, you make the decision, and then you just hope it works.”

It certainly has worked, but perhaps not how it was expected to. Instead of deploying Smith as a striker, Andonovski has played her as a right winger.

Initially, that drew skepticism from observers who saw Smith as a successor to Morgan and Christen Press. But once Catarina Macario reached the senior team, Smith’s wide role made more sense, because Macario can play up top or drop back to create for wide players cutting in.

When Macario suffered a torn ACL in early June and Morgan returned, the questions resurfaced. Would Smith be as effective next to a more traditional striker in Morgan, who’s usually best with wide creators around her?

The answers so far have been limited by the USWNT’s weaker-than-desired schedule this year. Big teams, especially in Europe, were committed to World Cup qualifying and the European Championship; and the U.S. has no choice about the regional foes it faced in Concacaf’s World Cup and Olympics qualifiers.

» READ MORE: Sophia Smith enjoyed a Colorado homecoming this summer

We’ll learn more next month when the U.S. and England clash at Wembley Stadium. The matchup always draws headlines, but will do so even more now with England wearing Europe’s crown. All 90,000 tickets available sold out within 24 hours of going on sale in early August.

But there have already been two key hints that a Morgan-Smith pairing can work. The first came on Smith’s second goal Saturday, when Morgan checked back toward midfield to help the play develop.

The second makes sense if you think about it. If you’re an opposing defense, which of the two players do you key on — not to mention speedy left winger Mallory Pugh?

Send too many bodies toward Morgan and it gives Smith extra space to work in. Focus on Smith, and you’ve only left Morgan alone.

The more they play together before next year’s World Cup, the more chemistry they’ll build, and Macario and Press will return from ACL injuries before then, too.

“Playing with Mal and Alex is just so fun, because they have so much energy,” Smith said after Saturday’s game. “We’re all very different, but we play together so well, and with each game we just continue to build on that chemistry.”

Andonovski said building that chemistry “was certainly one area of the game that we wanted to get better at [and] that we wanted to focus on.”

The process started during the Concacaf tournament, and took another step over the weekend.

“Her movements off of Alex were very precise,” Andonovski said of Smith. “We saw a couple of good connections with Alex, a couple of good connections with the players that were around. She’s becoming not just individually a very good player, but she’s also bringing other players in the game, and helps them look better on the field.”

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The U.S. and Nigeria will conclude a two-game set on Tuesday in D.C. (6 p.m., ESPN2) — notably, the first time the U.S. women have played in the nation’s capital in five years. In fact, it’s been a while since either senior national team has come to town, as the men haven’t done so since 2019.

The last time the women’s team played here, it was at old RFK Stadium, which was shut down in 2019 and is slated for demolition next year. A sellout crowd is expected for the team’s debut at 20,000-seat Audi Field, soccer’s current home in a longtime hotbed for the sport.

After the game, there will be a ceremony on the field for the signing of U.S. Soccer’s new equal pay collective bargaining agreements with its men’s and women’s players’ unions.

» READ MORE: Megan Rapinoe hails ‘a huge step forward’ in U.S. Soccer’s national team equal pay deals