USWNT boss warns ‘no mistakes’ against Sweden

MELBOURNE, Australia — United States women’s national team coach Vlatko Andonovski and striker Alex Morgan said on Saturday they need to be better against Sweden in the round of 16 as they put the country’s worst-ever Women’s World Cup group stage performance behind them.

“It’s the knockout stage and there’s no room for mistakes, so we have to be ready to be our best in this game,” Andonovski said.

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The USWNT won just one of their group games against Vietnam before drawing to both Netherlands and Portugal as they inched out of their group. Before this tournament, they had never won fewer than two games or emerged from the group with fewer than six points.

“We’ve broken down what went wrong,” Morgan said. “How we can fix that in possession, out of possession — how we can capitalize on the chances we have in front of goal, how we can create more chances, how I can put away the chances I’m given.”

The Americans will face world No. 3-ranked Sweden on Sunday, a team that handily beat the U.S. in the 2021 Olympics group stage and knocked the U.S. out of the 2016 Olympics in the quarterfinal. At the last World Cup in 2019, the USWNT beat Sweden in the group stage.

“What’s happened against Sweden in the past is in the past,” Morgan said. “We obviously take away a lot of things in terms of their playing style and how to break them down, but I don’t think that there’s any feelings towards the games we played against them in the past that we’re bringing into tomorrow.”

The U.S. will be without midfielder Rose Lavelle, who started the tournament on a minutes restriction, coming in as a substitute in the USA’s first two games. Andonovski had said Lavelle changed the games when she came in, but after starting and picking up a second yellow card in the final group stage match, she will be ineligible to play against Sweden.

Andonovski said Savannah DeMelo and Ashley Sanchez can step in to that attacking midfielder role, but he declined to say who would take her place, saying “we’ll have to see what will be the best fit for the game plan that we have.”

“Rose is a great player — one of the best players in the world — and not having her is definitely going to change some of the ways we’re going to approach the game,” Andonovski said. “At this same time, we have a great roster of players who are here for a reason, for moments like this and are ready to step in.”