Vlatko Andonovski, the pinnacle coach of the US ladies’s nationwide soccer staff, has resigned, the U.S. Soccer Federation confirmed Thursday, ending a comparatively tumultuous tenure managing what was as soon as the world’s pre-eminent staff.
Andonovski’s four-year contract was scheduled to run out on the finish of the 12 months. U.S. Soccer introduced Thursday that Twila Kilgore, an assistant coach with the ladies’s nationwide staff, will take over as interim coach. Kilgore was beforehand an assistant coach of the Houston Sprint within the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League for 2 years.
The federation hopes to have a everlasting substitute named by the tip of the 12 months to be able to start preparations for subsequent summer time’s Paris Olympics.
Andonovski’s resignation was not sudden. The US drastically underperformed at this 12 months’s Girls’s World Cup after successful the earlier two tournaments. The staff had its earliest elimination in event historical past after shedding a penalty shootout to rival Sweden within the spherical of 16. The US scored solely 4 objectives in a World Cup it entered as one of many favorites, beating solely considered one of its 4 opponents, Vietnam, and drawing with the Netherlands and Portugal throughout the group stage.
“It’s been the glory of my life to educate the gifted, hard-working gamers of the usW.N.T. for the previous 4 years,” Andonovski mentioned in a information launch. “Whereas we’re all disenchanted by the result at this 12 months’s World Cup, I’m immensely happy with the progress this staff has made, the help they’ve proven for one another, and the inspiration they’ve offered for gamers all over the world.”
Andonovski, 46, had been a head coach within the N.W.S.L. for seven years earlier than U.S. Soccer announced his hiring in October 2019. His predecessor, Jill Ellis, stepped down after 5 years with the staff after the US received the 2019 Girls’s World Cup, making Ellis the primary coach to win back-to-back Girls’s World Cups.
Andonovski received the primary 16 video games he coached, together with titles in 2020 on the Concacaf Olympic qualifying event and the SheBelieves Cup. The coronavirus pandemic struck six months into Andonovski’s tenure, pushing the Tokyo Olympics again a 12 months to 2021 and complicating his first two years on the job. As soon as the Video games got here round, the US entered as favorites however received solely a bronze medal.
Because the World Cup started, the US’ means to seize an elusive three-peat — no staff has received three titles in a row because the event’s inception in 1991 — was known as into query virtually instantly. The Individuals beat Vietnam of their opening recreation, however by a relatively modest 3-0 margin, nothing just like the 13-0 romp over Thailand that opened their 2019 title run. The Individuals would rating solely as soon as extra, on a header from Lindsey Horan that evened the rating with the Netherlands, 1-1.
A scoreless tie with Portugal was sufficient for the US to advance however not win its group, spurring the necessity for a “Belief” social media marketing campaign heading into the spherical of 16 and opening the nationwide staff as much as criticism from its personal, with former gamers resembling Tobin Heath and Carli Lloyd voicing dissatisfaction with the staff’s model of play.
Andonovski was criticized for his tactical decision-making, together with his choices on substitutes. He additionally had star gamers like Alex Morgan and Julie Ertz enjoying completely different roles than that they had prior to now, with blended outcomes. Thrilling newcomers like Ashley Sanchez and 18-year-old Alyssa Thompson barely performed.
In the long run, a millimeter was the brink to let Sweden advance and cease the US — and Andonovski — miles wanting expectations.
