Emma Hayes eager to see what top USWNT prospects

When Emma Hayes took the reins of the ladies’s national soccer staff in 2024, one of her first targets was to plumb the depths of the staff’s expertise pool. She knew what she had on the floor with veterans such as Rose Lavelle, Naomi Girma, Lindsey Heaps and Trinity Rodman. But what about the gamers under them? Who may step in in case of injury, absence or a lack of type?

Twenty months later, Hayes still hasn’t reached the underside of that pool, making this month’s training camp in Carson an important one with World Cup qualifying looming in the autumn.

“Some of the pool players are going to get an opportunity to shine,” she said. “Some are high-potential prospects. I think about Hal Hershfelt or Croix Bethune, players who have not had a lot of opportunity with us. I get a chance to really see where they’re at.

“My message is these players really have to take these opportunities because they will become few and far between.”

Hayes has given 27 gamers their senior national staff debuts and has used 50 different starters in her 30 matches as coach. No other U.S. supervisor has named more than 36 starters over a related span. And the quantity of debutantes may grow since three of the 26 ladies called up are still trying for their first worldwide cap — one thing they may earn this month since the training camp will end with friendlies against Paraguay on Saturday at Dignity Health Sports Park and Chile at UC Santa Barbara on Jan. 27.

Saturday’s matinee will embrace a pregame tribute to Christen Press, a two-time world champion who announced her retirement last fall.

But as invaluable as the persevering with auditions could also be, the choice to call up a roster of younger, NWSL gamers was made out of necessity, not design. Because the camp falls outdoors a FIFA window, Hayes was unable to summon European-based gamers such as Girma, Heaps, Alyssa Thompson, Crystal Dunn and Catarina Macario. Also unavailable have been Jaedyn Shaw, Jaelin Howell, Tierna Davidson, Emily Sonnett and Lavelle, U.S. Soccer’s ladies’s participant of the 12 months, who will all be taking part in for Gotham FC in next week’s FIFA Women’s Championship Club in England.

“If the European-based players and the Gotham-based players were here, this would be a completely different roster,” Hayes said. “But that’s not the case.”

It’s also nothing new. The coach hasn’t had what she considers her first-choice roster since taking over the national staff.

Injury saved Macario off the staff that struck gold in the Paris Olympics, Hayes’ first match as coach, while forwards Sophia Wilson and Mallory Swanson have been on maternity depart since the Olympics. Injuries have restricted Rodman, another ahead, to one sport over the past 18 months.

Despite that, the U.S. has misplaced just three of 20 video games since climbing off the medal stand in Paris. So while she would favor to start the new 12 months with the veteran core of her 2027 World Cup roster in uniform, that didn’t occur. Instead, the 26 invited gamers — among them Rodman, Angel City defender Gisele Thompson and Santa Clarita’s Olivia Moultrie — average 24.1 years of age and 6.6 caps of senior-team expertise.

“What I’ve learned since the Olympics is I can never, ever pick the best roster because I’m always going to be without players,” she said.

With the World Cup a 12 months away, the tryout period will soon be ending. Hayes said she and her employees have mapped out how they’d like to see 2026 unfold, and that plan contains narrowing the potential participant pool to about 35 ladies forward of the SheBelieves Cup in March.

“Once we get to SheBelieves, if everyone is available to me, it will be the group that are strong candidates to be [part of World Cup qualifying],” she said. “It will be an extremely competitive roster.”

Yet will probably be one that still gained’t embrace Wilson or Swanson, who mixed for seven of the staff’s 12 targets in the Olympics. Wilson gave beginning to a daughter in September, two months before Swanson did the same. Hayes, who had a son in the spring of 2018, doesn’t plan to rush back either participant.

“I know how long it takes to recover after having a baby. That’s why I don’t like putting time frames on it,” she said. “Hormones play a big part of it. And you don’t actually realize that until you’ve had a baby.

“For some the recovery is quicker than others. Depends on your age, depends on type of birth, sleep. Loads of things.”

In the meantime, Hayes will keep dipping into the expertise pool she has.

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