The US women’s national team is heading towards an exciting summer, no matter what happens at the Olympics in Paris. This weekend, Emma Hayes will take charge of the four-time Olympic gold medallists and four-time World Cup Champions for the first time. Hayes has had a squad of 27 (including four training players) and, with time dwindling, she will rely on those reservoirs of talent to adapt quickly to her tactics as they prepare for an Olympic run.

High on the list of names that may prove essential to Hayes’s plans is Trinity Rodman of Washington Spirit. The day after scoring a first-half double against Angel City, the 22-year-old felt the US have recovered from their World Cup disappointment. “It was a very hard year with Spirit [who missed out on the playoffs] and the national team. I think ‘learning experience’ is the best way I would describe 2023.”

Related: From tactics to a wildly talented teenager: Emma Hayes’s USWNT in-tray

Hayes has spoken about the exciting young generation in the US ranks, but has emphasised that experience is also needed. One silver lining of last summer’s World Cup, where the defending champions were knocked out by Sweden in the last 16, is that many of those younger players, including Rodman, now understand what it takes on the biggest stage.

Rodman says: “For us younger players in the World Cup that played a lot, like me and Soph [Smith], and [Emily] Fox and Naomi [Girma] … it tested us a lot. As a team you [have] got to figure out what’s going wrong quickly and we didn’t do that in the World Cup. I don’t look back at it in a bad way any more. I did closer to the loss and being sent home. But now I look at it happily, because it was a great learning experience.”

There are elements of playing in a World Cup that are impossible to train for. According to Rodman, a lot of it is on a mental level. “It was amazing to experience the feelings of everything,” she says. “Because the biggest [part] is the mental and emotional parts of high competition like that. We’re used to the physicality and the demand on our bodies and the toll that has. But the mental side of a World Cup is something you can’t prepare for if you’ve never been there.”

In the months after the tournament in Australia and New Zealand the team worked with the interim manager, Twila Kilgore, who remains on Hayes’s coaching staff, to evolve and recover their lost identity. In a triumph of the spirit as much as anything else, the team lifted two consecutive trophies in the W Gold Cup and SheBelieves Cup, while starting to look like that old tenacious, never-say-die USWNT in the process.

Rodman’s favourite moment in those tournaments? The Colombia game, when the US bounced back from a historic defeat by Mexico by beating the World Cup quarter-finalists 3-0 in a highly entertaining, if at times testy physical battle. Rodman could be seen flying down the wing, doing back-heel nutmegs through defenders’ legs.

“It was just a wild game,” she says. “But again a learning experience for me. I’m always going to be a feisty player. I have a lot of heart on the field. But being able to control your emotions in a situation like that and being able to end up on top and dominate the game … That game was a mental test, and they were trying to get in our heads, which they did. But we still came out on top.”

Rodman says when she found out about Hayes’s appointment she called a few fellow players to debrief. Their excitement was clear. “I just had known of her accomplishments and how great she was, and heard through other people, how successful and how good she is also just as a person … So I was really happy. The growth of the game and also having more women in this sport is really cool.

“I’m very open minded and excited about the future and what there is to come with her, because we haven’t even scratched the surface. When she comes in it’s going to be pedal to the metal for sure.”

In 2021, Rodman was the youngest NWSL draft pick in history when she turned professional with Washington Spirit aged 18. It took her five minutes to score a goal on her professional debut. At the end of a Championship-winning season, when Rodman scored eight goals and notched seven assists in all competitions,she was named Rookie of the Year.

Now four years into her professional career with the Spirit (and with 36 USWNT caps), Rodman is balancing roles as a developing leader and her game as a young footballer. Despite the experience she brings to the Spirit, Rodman only turned 22 last week: “It’s definitely a balance of [the type of] leadership of, I have the experience, but also I am a young player who’s trying to figure out my identity still. I’m trying to learn and improve every game.”

As we get into the middle third of the season, Rodman is hitting her stride. She has three goals and four assists in 10 games and merits early consideration for being a league MVP finalist.

Though last season ended in heartbreak – Rodman was sent off in a closely contested Decision Day when Spirit fell short of the playoffs – Washington have started strongly in 2024. After 11 games, they are third in the league with eight wins and three losses. Rodman attributes their success to building a strong, new foundation while integrating numerous new faces into their squad and working with the interim manager, Adrián González.

“Throughout the years, it’s fluctuated a lot in the way that we play, in our identity,” Rodman says. “And this year, we’re really honing in on who we are as a team. TWe want to be a dangerous team. Something Adrián says a lot is just a way of defending is having the ball. And that’s something we’ve been trying to do; control the game with the ball and then be dangerous in our attack.”

This summer, they’ll be joined by the former Barcelona manager Jonatan Giráldez, who just concluded his tenure in Catalonia with a second straight Champions League title. Washington Spirit’s burgeoning new identity is something Rodman expects to grow when Giráldez arrives: “The style of play is different than what I’ve played in the past, which is great. It’s also just interchange within positions. What’s made us really successful this year is just the ability to pop in and out of spaces.

“There’s interchange between me, Croix [Bethune], Ouleye [Sarr], [Ashley] Hatch, even our outside-backs getting high and us coming inside is huge and just trying to get everybody on the ball. The majority of our goals, everyone touched the ball or it was a team build-up. It’s not just one person doing something great.”

There is not much time before Paris, but the distinctive Spanish style Giráldez will bring may help prepare Spirit’s players for international football or help catch the eye of Hayes. She expressed the need to expose the US player pool to a wider variety of tactical styles as they compete in an evolving global landscape.

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