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Vlatko Andonovski, the pinnacle coach of america girls’s nationwide soccer crew, 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 crew.
Andonovski’s four-year contract was scheduled to run out on the finish of the yr. U.S. Soccer introduced Thursday that Twila Kilgore, an assistant coach with the ladies’s nationwide crew, 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 alternative named by the tip of the yr so as to start preparations for subsequent summer season’s Paris Olympics.
Andonovski’s resignation was not sudden. The USA drastically underperformed at this yr’s Girls’s World Cup after successful the earlier two tournaments. The crew had its earliest elimination in match historical past after shedding a penalty shootout to rival Sweden within the spherical of 16. The USA scored solely 4 objectives in a World Cup it entered as one of many favorites, beating solely one in every of its 4 opponents, Vietnam, and drawing with the Netherlands and Portugal in the course of the group stage.
“It’s been the honour of my life to educate the gifted, hard-working gamers of the united statesW.N.T. for the previous 4 years,” Andonovski mentioned in a information launch. “Whereas we’re all disillusioned by the end result at this yr’s World Cup, I’m immensely pleased with the progress this crew 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 introduced his hiring in October 2019. His predecessor, Jill Ellis, stepped down after 5 years with the crew after america gained the 2019 Girls’s World Cup, making Ellis the primary coach to win back-to-back Girls’s World Cups.
Andonovski gained the primary 16 video games he coached, together with titles in 2020 on the Concacaf Olympic qualifying match and the SheBelieves Cup. The coronavirus pandemic struck six months into Andonovski’s tenure, pushing the Tokyo Olympics again a yr to 2021 and complicating his first two years on the job. As soon as the Video games got here round, america entered as favorites however gained solely a bronze medal.
Because the World Cup started, america’ skill to seize an elusive three-peat — no crew has gained three titles in a row because the match’s inception in 1991 — was known as into query nearly instantly. The Individuals beat Vietnam of their opening sport, 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 america to advance however not win its group, spurring the necessity for a “Perception” social media marketing campaign heading into the spherical of 16 and opening the nationwide crew as much as criticism from its personal, with former gamers equivalent to Tobin Heath and Carli Lloyd voicing dissatisfaction with the crew’s fashion of play.
Andonovski was criticized for his tactical decision-making, together with his selections on substitutes. He additionally had star gamers like Alex Morgan and Julie Ertz taking part in totally different roles than they’d up 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 america — and Andonovski — miles in need of expectations.
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