The women’s soccer tournament at the Olympics is, essentially, snorting a miniature World Cup. You take the intensity of global competition, squish it from 32 teams down to 12, and play the whole thing over the course of just seventeen days. It’s gonna be a wild ride, so to help us all prepare, I’ve previewed it all.

Group A | Group C

We’ve been blessed with incredible teams stuffed into three incredible groups in a way that guarantees each game will be a must, and necessary, watch. Below I’ve dropped a quick look at the group overall, then identified two players from each team that I think will be vital to their team’s performance (with help from StatsBomb where relevant), plus ask a key question each team will have to answer.

Lovely, let’s Olympics.

group B at-a-glance

Now this is how you do a group of death. A couple former powerhouses in transition, an underdog with two outrageous attacking talents, and a team coming off its best ever finish at a World Cup. This is the kind of chaos I like to see, tysm soccer deities.

Germany have already lost to Zambia this year, and recently lost to Iceland 3-1 in EUROs qualifying prior to the Olympics. The USWNT had their worst ever finish at a World Cup and is finally getting their Emma Hayes Era underway. Zambia’s Racheal Kundananji currently has the distinction of commanding the highest transfer fee for a women’s player, and her teammate Barbra Banda has hit the NWSL like a goal-hoarding asteroid. Australia made it to the semifinals of a home World Cup and missed out on their first medal in the last Olympics, thanks to a wild 4-3 loss a very poor performing USWNT.

What I’m saying is watch every single match this group has to offer. The intrigue will be on a hundred million.

whomsts i’m watching

Tierna Davidson

Injuries derailed Tierna’s early career but she’s still just 25, has been healthy, and has gotten back to her former self. So back that she’s now the unquestioned USWNT center back partner for Naomi Girma, and could be for a long time. For Gotham this season she’s been steady, and a difficult player to beat 1v1. Her Tack/DP%—percentage of successful tackles vs being dribbled past—is an absurdly high 88% per 90.

This is key because her left back beside her at Gotham will likely be the left back beside her on the USWNT, though the closest they’re likely to be to one another is the lineup graphic. In order to get the best out of Nighswonger she has to play higher up the pitch, which leaves Davidson a lot of space to cover. How she copes with and defends that space—an area opposing teams have found success targeting—will define how successful she, and the USWNT, will be.

If Casey Krueger or Emily Sonnett are needed in central defense, Sam Staab, Abby Dahlkemper, Emily Sams and Eva Gaetino should consider the position up for grabs post-Olympics.

Jaedyn Shaw

The Lord keeps manically laughing at my anticipation of one day finally having Catarina Macário behind Mallory Swanson, Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman at a major tournament. I thought 2024 was finally going to be the year, then Macário pulled out due to ‘minor knee irritation’ before the match against Mexico.

That just plain sucks. First of all, for her, then for us and the forward line. I will continue to hope, believe and even anticipate, but it’ll yet again have to wait until later.

For this tournament, Jaedyn Shaw should be the candidate to drop from the forward group into the #10 position. Except when the opportunity arose ahead of Costa Rica, Hayes opted for Horan, which was alarming, confusing, and disappointing. In 11.5 90s played (only 5.0 at CAM for some reason) in the first half of the NWSL season, Shaw has 18 passes leading directly to shots, totaling 2.2 xG and .12 xG per shot. That’s erm, goodt.

She’s also third in the league with 1.39 passes into the box per 90 (min. 900 minutes), and has a penchant for opening defenses up with throughballs.

Of those 18 key passes, four were from throughballs and averaged .19 xG per shot (one assist). Emma Hayes has stressed that the team has to find the right times to vroom, as one cannot vroom for 90 minutes. But when it’s time, no one in Hayes’ 18 is better at injecting verticality through passing, particularly into the final third.

In a test run of what surely felt like Emma Hayes’ preferred XI against Mexico, she chose Rose Lavelle. As a longtime Pink Lava Truther, I’m not necessarily frustrated by that, but there is a question as to whether Lavelle’s dribbling or Shaw’s passing is more valuable to the forward line. (And Horan playing the 10 should only be done if the emergency is worth breaking the glass to use the plasma cutter that’ll break into the safe containing that lineup and gameplan.)

key question
meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

Obvs this is offensive to Emma Hayes sans context, however, it’s more about infrastructure and influence around and above. Hayes has had limited training sessions with the squad, a fact she mentioned a couple times after the 0-0 draw with Costa Rica. The problem I had with that match wasn’t that it ended scoreless—though that super sucked—it’s the way in which it was played.

Once Rose Lavelle was out, Hayes pushed Lindsey Horan to the 10 and brought Korbin Albert in to play alongside Sam Coffey. It all looked annoyingly familiar in its disjointedness. Even if they’d found the back of the net two or even three times it would have still been a concerning set of decisions which suggested Horan is the second choice 10 over Jaedyn Shaw and Croix Bethune.

It also reveals that if that’s the case, Horan won’t be tasked with linking play and making late runs, but instead will be the primary box target. Horan doesn’t score enough from these scenarios to make this anything more than an emergency option, and service from midfield is key to getting the most out of what’s—on paper and pure talent—the best attacking unit at the Olympics.

Perhaps with only twelve training sessions Hayes chose to take the PR hit in order to maintain an element of surprise once matches kickoff in France. If not, and these are indeed indicative of the decisions we should expect, meet the new boss, etc.

whomsts i’m watching

Grace Chanda

Chanda was forced to miss Zambia’s debut at the World Cup after coming down with an illness prior to the tournament. It was actually quite a scary story, as she was hospitalized for a not-insignificant period of time. However, she’s recovered since and is looking to get back to her best form.

In the 22/23 season for Madrid CFF, Racheal Kundananji balled out at Madrid CFF as Chanda’s teammate, scoring 25 goals the delivering three assists in Liga F. Chanda was an important link from midfield and helped consistently create shots with her passing. In 22/23, Barcelona players took 7 of the top 9 spots in shot creating actions per 90 (SCA90), but Chanda was among the ten non-Barca players who managed to post over 4.10 SCA90.

If Chanda regains her form, she’ll be a significant piece of Zambia’s attack that teams didn’t have to cope with at the World Cup. After the tournament she’s headed to the NWSL to join the Orlando Pride, where a new Copper Queen will call her teammate: Barbra Banda. Speaking of Banda…

Barbra Banda

Barbra Banda went off at the last Olympic tournament and dropped back-to-back hat tricks against China and the Netherlands. It took a couple years to get her to a more accessible league, and she’s landed in the NWSL with enough force to shift tectonic plates.

In her first twelve games played in the league she’s taken 59 shots, scored twelve goals, averaging a tremendously high .16 xG per shot (NWSL average is .10), and absolutely terrorizing defenses.

Part of this is right player/right team/right time, as the Orlando Pride prepared their team to maximize a star talent like Banda. For several reasons which aren’t the fault of the players, the same hasn’t been done at the national team level.

Still, Banda is a goal threat whenever she’s on the pitch, is in form, and full of confidence given her immediate success in a new league. NWSL-watchers could be giddily kicking their feet watching her finally tormenting a team that isn’t one they root for.

key question
can you channel your inner kendrick lamar?

Zambia need to go into the tournament channeling the #1 hater of this moment, Kendrick Lamar, whose total annihilation of Drake has been a marvel to witness, and has even led to the song of the summer. Zambia need this energy.

They’re talented and dangerous enough in attack to worry every team in the group. Zambia should enter each match prepared to put opponents and their fans in the same fetal position Drake reflexively curls into when he hears “psst I see dead people.” The year of the hater demands it, and Zambia have players who can deliver if given chances to shine.

whomsts i’m watching

Lea Schüller

At some point this team has to stop relying on German Alex Morgan and hand the keys and goalscoring impetus to their younger generation. At the World Cup, Popp scored four of the team’s six goals. Worse, the other two were scored in the team’s 6-0 win over Morocco, their first match of the tournament. There are many reasons why Germany went out in the group stages, but no one besides Popp contributing a goal after the final whistle of the first game is definitely one.

Lea Schüller was one of the non-Popp players to get a goal, and if Germany are to break out of their weirdness and runs of odd/poor results, she’ll have to do more.

Schüller might be ready for the role. Her above shot map from the league leaves no hints about where, and how, she attacks the ball—dead center, lotta headers. Seems familiar, seems useful.

In the 23/24 Frauen Bundesliga season she played in 22 of 22 games for eventual champions Bayern Munich, starting 18 and scoring 11 goals. Popp, who plays for their league rival, Wolfsburg, played in 19 matches (16 starts) and scored seven. But Wolfsburg have also been smart with Popp, having her drop into deeper positions to play various roles within the team, which helped her rack up nine assists.

Popp not having to be the primary central box presence frees her up to do more of the same progression and chance creation for the national team, and Schüller stepping up could be key to it all.

Sjoeke Nüsken

In extremely sad and dispiriting news Lena Oberdorf tore her ACL in Germany’s final pre-Olympics match versus Austria. Oberdorf is best defensive midfield destroyer in the world, capable of covering the width of the pitch to break up play and spring attacks. Nüsken was always going to be a vital piece of the midfield as well, but with Oberdorf out her responsibilities magnify exponentially.

There is no singular stand-in for Oberdorf so the German midfield will have to restructure. Nüsken could be key in making that a bit easier. According to StatsBomb, across Nüsken’s 14.2 90s played for Chelsea in the WSL, she spent 1.5 at center back, 4.3 at defensive midfield, 1.7 in center midfield, 4.3 attacking midfield, and even 2.4 as a forward.

Given how many positions she played, it may take some tweaking to find the best utilization of her talents in a new midfield structure. Nüsken’s midfield player radar show’s her posting top tier open play xG assisted numbers, but when filtered to attacking midfield it’s about average.

However, I dug a bit deeper and found that Nüsken led all Chelsea players—regardless of minutes played—in xG Buildup per 90, 1.14. The xG Buildup model ignores strips away expected goals and expected assists to spotlight possession-based decision in buildup play. Basically, how integral was a player to a sequence prior to the fireworks happening.

For the most part Nüsken was given the platform by the defensive work of Erin Cuthbert. On Germnay, Oberdorf was meant to be that player. Now she and Germany will have to figure something out, and if they can they’ll have a midfield chameleon capable of handling an array of tasks dependent on the opposition.

key question
you good? like, seriously, are you ok?

Even prior to Oberdorf’s injury Germany were in a weird place. They got bounced out of their World Cup group with Colombia, Morocco and South Korea, and lost 3-1 to Iceland in one their final EUROs qualifiers pre-Olympics. Their coach from 2019-2023, Martina Voss-Tecklenburg, has moved on and it’s supposed to be a new era. Results have been either sporadic or downright hilarious.

Germany’s squad features thirteen outfield players who are 26 or younger and four who are 30+, an age gap that suggests a mishandled transition. However, Germany’s youth are deeply talented and are nearing athletic peaks. Finding success at this tournament—which can simply be defined as actually getting out of the group this time—will go a long way toward telling us whether or not Germany are ok, or if they still need a minute (or several).

whomst’s i’m watching

Mary Fowler

Australia found ways to have success at a home World Cup without Sam Kerr playing a ton of minutes due to a calf injury prior to the tournament. Now that Kerr is rehabbing a torn ACL, they won’t have her at all. Part of their reasons for success included a talent like Mary Fowler stepping up and absolutely hoopin.

For title chasers Manchester City—who lost out on the final day and only by goal difference—Fowler played 15.1 90s with most as a left or right winger.

Basically she was a passing, dribbling, ball carrying menace with the ability to get close to and inside the box. The latter tenency may have been why she spent more time on the right, which forced England star Chloe Kelly, who prefers to play as a wide winger, to the bench.

This led to four goals and six assists, with just one assist from a corner and all the rest from open play. Her development in this area could provide relief for an Australia without one of the best strikers in the world.

Cortnee Vine

I won’t say a ton here because I broke down Vine’s post-Olympics move to North Carolina Courage already.

The gist is that she’s a fun, dynamic player with lots of directness who times her runs well and has a variety of finishes. With a giant Sam Kerr-sized hole at center forward, Vine’s direct running could be used as a stand-in to forcing defenses to worry about space left in behind.

key question
was the world cup PEDs or are you actually kinda swole now?

Australia (and New Zealand) hosted last year’s World Cup and the Aussies went on a magical run that ended with their best ever finish at the tournament, as well as some shifted tectonic plates. They beat France on penalties to get to the semifinals, but lost out on third place with a humbling 0-2 loss to Sweden.

Still, something amazing had been built in the leadup to the event, and the team delivered several perfect feel good moments and goals that literally millions of Australians will never forget. They’ve managed to hold onto their coach, Tony Gustavsson, but have had mixed results since the World Cup—1 draw, 1 win, 1 loss since May 31.

At the last Olympic tournament Australia missed out on a bronze medal after a 4-3 loss to Vlatko Andonovski’s no good very bad USWNT. Now, with the euphoria of a World Cup worn off, we’ll get to see whether the leap was real or a high xG value chance gifted by good vibes and the universe herself.

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