This USWNT Olympic roster might be the toughest to make of all time

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — For generations, the U.S. women’s soccer team has been the hardest national team in the sport to make. And even though the program has fallen from its past heights, on that count it’s still the reigning champion.

No other nation has as big of an established player pool to pick from, not even fellow superpowers like England, France, and reigning World Cup champion Spain. Not every U.S. player can match their rivals’ talent these days, but those nations still can’t match this one for pure scale.

They keep coming here, too, thanks to the NWSL’s long-awaited embrace of precollege players and its expansion. More players in the league means more competition for golden tickets to the sport’s biggest stage.

This summer brings another factor. While World Cup squads have 23 players, the Olympics have stood firm at 18, plus four alternates who travel in case of injury. FIFA and the IOC have even reversed their allowance in 2021 of letting the alternates be eligible for an 18-player game-day squad. (They claimed back then it was due to the pandemic, but it was a good idea anyway.)

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So it stands to reason that this year’s U.S. women’s Olympic team might just be the hardest to make in the program’s venerated history: nine World Cups since 1991, and what will be the eighth Olympics since the Games added women’s soccer in 1996.

The players know it, too.

“It’s what makes the U.S. national team so competitive, and one of the most competitive teams in the world,” midfielder and captain Lindsey Horan said. “Our player pool is insane, and I see that with some of the new, less-experienced players that are coming into camp right now.

They haven’t all wanted to talk about it, understandably taking things one game at a time. But it’s definitely in their minds amid the national team’s last gathering before Hayes picks the Olympic team. Conversations with many of them in recent days have made that clear.

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“I think there is a lot of unknown for us as players about what Emma’s going to want in terms of personnel, and what positions you might beef up versus the positions [where] you might take one less player,” said centerback Tierna Davidson, who narrowly missed last year’s World Cup team after making the 2019 World Cup and 2021 Olympics.

“Eighteen players is just not a lot to round out a lot of soccer roster, so it definitely is a lot of unknown for us,” Davidson continued. “But that’s kind of what you sign up for when you’re in this environment.”

She certainly did her part Saturday, with a great performance in Saturday’s 4-0 rout of South Korea. The 25-year-old kept the shutout at one end, scored two headed goals off corner kicks at the other, and won lots of praise from Hayes afterward.

Winger Mallory Swanson didn’t make the cut for the 2021 Olympics, after going to the 2016 Games and 2019 World Cup. Then she missed last year’s World Cup in even more painful circumstances: a torn patella tendon suffered three months before the tournament.

“You can never take any day for granted,” she said after her own two-goal outing, both pinpoint finishes. “So I’m just really taking everything day-by-day, and am just super thankful that I’m back.”

» READ MORE: A year after narrowly missing the World Cup, Sam Coffey is close to making the USWNT’s Olympic team

Tuesday’s rematch with South Korea in St. Paul, Minn. (8 p.m., truTV, Universo, Max, Peacock), will be the last chance for U.S. players to make an impression on the field. The official Olympic roster filing deadline is July 3, 10 days before Red Bull Arena hosts the Americans’ first of two send-off games against Mexico.

Who will make it and who won’t? This month’s roster offers clues, but not a full picture.

Alyssa Naeher’s injury absence means we won’t know who the starting goalkeeper is. Hayes didn’t call up Lynn Williams, who recently became the NWSL’s all-time top scorer, then listed Crystal Dunn as a forward. Even more surprisingly, Hayes played Dunn at right wing Saturday — though she admitted a few days earlier it’s because “I already know what she can do at left back.”

Will Dunn stay part of the forward unit? If so, what cascading impact could that have on the rest of the star-studded firepower?

The volume on those questions grew as loud as the roars for hometown heroes Swanson and Sophia Smith when they played at striker on Saturday, while veteran superstar Alex Morgan watched from the bench.

» READ MORE: Emma Hayes sets up her U.S. team debut with the last roster before picking the Olympic team

There were already quiet questions of whether Morgan might not make the Olympic team. Smith, Swanson, and Catarina Macario have been in great form with their clubs lately — the Portland Thorns, Chicago Red Stars, and England’s Chelsea, respectively — while Morgan has yet to score for the San Diego Wave this year. (She does have one assist; for the U.S., she has two goals and one assist.)

Morgan’s absence Saturday would have been one of the biggest talking points had Hayes not snuffed it out by revealing it was a precaution over a gameday-eve pelvic issue.

“We shouldn’t make anything of it,” Hayes said, and she classily noted it’s a subject mothers have to keep in mind. “This is an important issue to raise … Us women who have had children, we have to focus on keeping our pelvic floor agile.”

So 6-year-old Harry Hayes’ mom and 4-year-old Charlie Morgan’s mom had a conversation and settled things, coincidentally while the kids were hanging out together at the team hotel.

“I told her yesterday I’m not going to take any risks today, because I want her fresh for Tuesday,” Hayes said Saturday.

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We’ll see what happens Tuesday, then. Morgan will be under pressure to deliver. The highest-scoring mother in U.S. history has answered the bell many times before, and now must do it again.

“I only see the depth continuing to get greater,” the 34-year-old said just before Friday’s practice started. “I think it’s just a really healthy competitive environment, regardless of if you’re [age] 16 or me.”

Not even Horan, whom Hayes emphatically affirmed will keep the captain’s armband in her administration, believes she’s officially there yet.

“It would be an absolute honor to make this roster — an Olympic roster a third time for me would be incredible,” she said. “This is so difficult. An 18-man roster, you can’t take anything for granted.”

If she isn’t, you can be sure no one is.

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