Jill Ellis is guiding the USWNT to the front of a changing women’s game

Head coach Jill Ellis thinks women’s soccer is about to get way more technical and tactically nuanced, and she’s trying to make sure the U.S. women are at the forefront of that movement. It’s been a tumultuous two years for the Americans since they captured Olympic gold, but Sunday’s win suggests Ellis knows what she’s doing, and her team is starting to figure out how to execute exactly what she expects from them.

Sunday’s final against Costa Rica should have been the United States’ biggest test of the tournament. And despite the 6-0 score by which they defeated Las Ticas, it genuinely was. Unlike the matches against Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti, there were no horrific individual errors for the U.S. to capitalize on. Costa Rica played well enough that they shouldn’t have been blown out. The Americans were simply that good. They looked like themselves.

On a previous day, the American women might have scraped out a one- or two-goal win over Costa Rica, but they were finally comfortable with each other and what Ellis wants from them on Sunday. They looked like a perfect combination of a pretty possession side and the physical force that they’ve been for the last 25 years.

Ultimately, Sermanni’s downfall was probably that he tried to change too much, too fast. The women’s game is evolving and the United States can’t dominate the rest of the world with physical ability alone anymore. But size, strength and speed will always remain important parts of soccer, and the USWNT still has more of those things than just about anyone else. A Tony Pulis side on steroids isn’t going to win World Cups consistently, but if you have the biggest and fastest players in the world then what’s the point of passing in circles?

Ellis’ biggest task is to get her players comfortable with where the women’s game is heading without losing what’s made them so formidable, and so far she’s succeeding. As lost as the USWNT looked trying to knock the ball around during the first three halves of World Cup qualifying, they looked comfortable against Costa Rica but also knew when to loft the ball up to Abby Wambach’s head. They looked complete and versatile going forward.

A lot of that has to do with the way a pair of players have adapted to their new roles, Wambach being one of them. Both Sermanni and Ellis have experimented with dropping her to the bench in favor of strikers who are faster and a bit more tricky with the ball at their feet, but Wambach’s starting to look more and more like a good fit on a team that wants to keep the ball and move it quickly on the ground. She has the skill to play as a complete forward who’s just as much a playmaker as a poacher, and as long as she can execute that slightly different role she’s the best option up top -- her seven goals in the tournament suggest as much, and even at the World Cup level her size is hard to deal with.

The other big change is at defensive midfield, where Lauren Holiday has had to learn a new position. Longtime midfield rock Shannon Boxx, now 37, is no longer in the USWNT setup. Because there’s no clear replacement in the player pool, Sermanni opted to just go without a defensive midfielder, which ended disastrously. Ellis has taken a different approach, giving run-outs to Holiday, Carli Lloyd and Morgan Brian in the spot.

Despite being the most suited to the job, Holiday looked completely, utterly unsuited to it early on, which was a big contributing factor to the team’s struggles against T&T and Guatemala. Perhaps by permanent design and perhaps due to the level of opposition, Holiday was more regista than destroyer, spraying attacking balls around from deep. A lot of them resulted in bad turnovers, and she was often caught out of position when the USWNT’s opponents countered off those turnovers.

But Holiday was much better in the second half against Guatemala, then good against Haiti, then even better against Mexico, then nearly flawless against Costa Rica. She didn’t make any dangerous turnovers, and whenever the U.S. did lose the ball, Las Ticas weren’t able to counter through the center.

It’s unsurprising that a player as good as Holiday was able to adapt to a new position -- she was arguably the NWSL’s best this season, and had much less attacking talent around her than MVP Kim Little. She’s played as a striker, left winger, attacking midfielder and box-to-box midfielder for the national team, after all. But the speed with which she went from looking lost to being able to control a game was astonishing, even if the U.S. played no elite teams and only three fringe World Cup-standard squads in this competition.

The United States entered World Cup qualifying looking like a team that had little idea of what they wanted to be, with players unsuited to the roles they were thrust into. They’re exiting qualifying looking like a formidable force, with players who understand their individual roles and each other perfectly.

If the USWNT’s last three games are any indication, they’re ready for a step up, and they should start looking like World Cup favorites shortly.