LONDON – At least for now, Vlatko Andonovski remains unbent. Just minutes after watching his USA team be defeated for the first time in more than a year, he was thinking happily of next summer’s World Cup final.
The best measure of his confidence wasn’t his insistence he wouldn’t mind running to England there – it was his working assumption that his side’s presence wasn’t far from safe.
However, he wasn’t the only one whose mind wandered after England’s 2-1 win on Friday night. So did the mind of Sarina Wiegman, the England coach.
“You don’t win a world championship in October,” she said. “It’s not July yet. But it’s really good to have this moment now, in our preparation for it. It’s good to have a test against the United States because they’ve won so many things over the years. It was very good to see where we are. We have shown that we can do it.”
Strictly speaking, there was of course nothing wrong with this encounter between the long-standing world champion and the newly crowned European champion at Wembley Stadium. There was no bright prize for victory, no enduring pain for defeat.
Instead, it was intended as a showpiece and showcase: a chance for England, fresh from winning their first international honor, to enjoy a celebratory homecoming, and an opportunity for the United States to stretch their legs on European soil. Although none of the players would have liked it, it also became an opportunity to show solidarity following the Yates report this week detailing the systematic abuse of women’s soccer players in the United States.
However, the meaning is determined by consensus. And deep down, both sides knew that the idea of this being a friendly, an exhibition, was a lie. After all, it’s the United States and England that, as Megan Rapinoe put it, have stood out from the crowd and are considered the two undisputed powerhouses of women’s football. It is the United States and England who are likely to go into next year’s World Cup as favorites and contenders. Wembley was the chance to determine which team would play which role.
It’s too easy to say, however, that England’s victory establishes his pre-eminence. That it’s the more resolute, more compelling of the two at this point – still 10 months from the finals – is a fair assessment; that it is the beneficiary of a burgeoning momentum built during its golden summer and nurtured by the overthrow of the United States, the sport’s historic hegemony.
For much of the game, England watched every inch of the force to come: crisper, smoother, more resourceful in possession than their visitors, better able to control and vary play, more ruthless on the break, more purposeful in pressing. It earned its early lead, secured by Lauren Hemp, and also deserved to wrestle it back, with Georgia Stanway atoning for conceding an equalizer to Sophia Smith by converting a penalty soon after.
Andonovski’s counter-argument would be no less compelling, however. No one would argue that this has been an easy week for any of its players, regardless of their professionalism, their determination to focus on the game, or the old and flawed cliché that the game itself, the sport a whole rotted around Industry has been established can provide solace and refuge and temporary escape. They were all forced to face the trauma of others and relive their own.
Even if they had been able to focus in the way they wished they did – as they deserved – they could reasonably have pointed out that their squad was not at full strength. Alex Morgan, Mallory Pugh and Sam Mewis were among those absent. Andonovski is also still working on integrating a new generation of talent, led by the likes of Smith and Trinity Rodman. This team is still a work in progress and its construction is not expected to be complete until it arrives in Australia and New Zealand to play the World Cup next year.
And despite all that, they lost to the European champions – the very best the rest of the world has to offer, on home soil and backed by a highly partisan crowd – by the slightest margin.
Rodman had ruled out an exquisitely crafted goal for the kind of gruesome, infinitely small offside enough to turn anyone against the concept of technology. Rapinoe was denied a chance to convert a late penalty to extend a winning streak that had grown to 13 games by slightly more obvious intervention from the video assistant referee.
More importantly, Smith was the standout player on the field – apart perhaps from the fearless Keira Walsh – and a constant source of terror for England’s back. Andonovski might not mind seeing England in the World Cup final next year. The English, it was believed, would not meet Smith again any time soon.
That both Andonovski and Wiegman felt comfortable enough to address the World Cup – to forgo the bromide, that this was just a friendly, just an exhibition, almost immediately after the final whistle – can perhaps be attributed to both being in this one had seen enough of the game to confirm their beliefs.
England now know they can beat the United States, that they can meet the sport’s gold standard. The United States, in turn, can sense that things could have been very different at full strength. Both can mean whatever they want.
And that consensus may now last a few more months until they meet again, on a stage even grander than this, when the stakes are high, when the pretense can safely be dropped, and if so, prizes for the winners and pain for the vanquished. Of course, Wiegman is right: The World Cup doesn’t end in October. But both she and Andonovski, as their minds wandered, saw Wembley as the moment it started.