Spain expose USWNT's midfield void as Hayes' World Cup blueprint remains unfinished

The discourse around the US women's national team may have been a harsh one if not for a fourth-half surge against Spain. In the latest of their back-to-back bookings — where Emma Hayes' team plays the same opponent twice — Spain looked far more confident and effective than the four-time champions.

USWNT players in action during the October friendly series against Spain

A familiar pattern across two matches

Both teams were missing a handful of crucial players — Naomi Girma and Sam Coffey headlining the US's absentees, while Aitana Bonmatí, Mariona Caldentey and Clàudia Pina were among Spain's. Nonetheless, Spain controlled the game and forced the US to settle for scraps in the final third.

The first game, played in Washington on 11 October 2026, saw Spain rush to a 2-0 lead inside 15 minutes through goals from Guijarro and Navarro and maintain that margin for a clean-sheet win. "They had two, three chances, and they took them. And scored really great goals," US captain Lindsey Heaps said. "But it came from our mistakes and came from something we can prevent."

On Tuesday in Pennsylvania, the US once again entered half-time facing an identical 2-0 deficit. It wasn't until Hayes made five changes in unison that they regained a foothold in the latter match and clawed back two goals from direct, incisive attacks — strikes from Mallory Swanson and Ashley Sanchez earning the draw. That's hardly a title-winning blueprint, and not just because a World Cup limits teams to five substitutions instead of the eight the teams agreed to for these games.

The cost of constant evaluation

This month, Spain's alternates slotted into the lineup and executed the game model because of holistic familiarity. Each player understood what their role was after meticulous refinement, and the team around them continued to operate as expected as a result. This kind of synergy can be enough to beat a more talented team, and long gone are the days where the United States can expect to beat another top women's national team on talent alone.

Hayes has not, at any point, implied otherwise. And so, her staff has been immensely thorough in working towards building the best 26-player roster they can. This year, like 2025, was a year of deep talent evaluation. The October window saw four players included without previous caps, as well as returns to the pitch for longtime absentees Mallory Swanson and Ashley Sanchez. Kate Del Fava and Pietra Tordin became the 33rd and 34th players to debut since Hayes assumed her post in mid-2024.

The efforts have made the pool deeper, but the duration and density of this search may be coming at the cost of that crucial synergy. A well-organized midfield is borderline mandatory to win a World Cup. Spain dominated in 2023 with awe-inspiring play in the heart of the park. So, too, did the United States during their successful repeat bid in 2019.

Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan's exploits were made possible by one of the most balanced midfield trios in recent memory: Sam Mewis as an ideal all-around central midfielder, Julie Ertz as a hard-nosed defensive midfielder and Rose Lavelle's facilitation to link with the attack. After injuries forced Mewis into an early retirement and Ertz called time on her career after 2023, Hayes has had the tall task of crafting a worthy sequel.

Her best Chelsea sides were built with midfielders whose technical acumen were bolstered by their tireless commitment to tracking back and pressing. Consistently doing so requires second-nature understanding of your teammates and how they operate, on the ball and especially without it. That synergy can't be rushed, and Hayes tried giving herself a deadline of sorts to begin doing that work.

"I want to get to the end of June where I have a really strong sense of a core group of players that will form part of the build towards the World Cup," Hayes told CBS, "but also know that we need to get some consistency in relationships, connections on the pitch, and we have to forego that for now while we're still evaluating players at an individual level."

That stated aim came before the April friendly window in 2025, hoping to pave a two-year runway to refine partnerships before the big games in Brazil. Injuries can partly be to blame for the delay, and more recent first-time call-ups have been made with an eye toward the 2028 Olympics. But the US still suffers from a specific lack of clarity in the middle of the park.

The midfield math doesn't add up

Tuesday's friendly was the United States' 27th match since the start of 2025, and seven midfielders have made at least three starting lineups in this span. Coffey and Claire Hutton have been the preferred defensive midfielders; Lindsey Heaps, Lily Yohannes, and the injured Olivia Moultrie as central midfielders; and Rose Lavelle and Jaedyn Shaw in attacking midfield.

Heaps has regularly floated between all three roles, the only player to start in each spot. While six of her 12 starts have come as the more all-around No 8, her other six have been evenly split between defensive midfield and attacking midfield. Despite this consistency of personnel, Hayes has used 17 different combinations of three midfielders in that span. Tuesday was just the second time that Hutton, Heaps, and Lavelle opened a match together. The consensus "first-choice" trio of Coffey, Heaps and Lavelle has also started together just twice in 20 months. The most common combination has been Lavelle playing in front of a Coffey-Hutton double pivot on four occasions.

Unfortunately, testing either of those trios against Spain was impossible once Coffey withdrew from camp with an injured left ankle. The perceived drawbacks of that setup is that both Coffey and Hutton thrive in more withdrawn deployment, which can increase gaps between the defensive block and the attack. It's possible that the full-backs (Emily Fox on the right and, increasingly often, Gisele Thompson on the left) can provide enough progression to mitigate for that, but it's why that No 8 role is still one Hayes wants to incorporate.

It's also a factor that makes Moultrie's torn ACL in August even more impactful. While Heaps remains Hayes's captain and Yohannes has earned regular starts with her improving skill set, Moultrie was arguably the most natural complement to Coffey, alongside whom she partnered in Portland for four seasons. And yet, she made just three starts since January 2025, and none alongside Coffey.

Looking ahead to Brazil

Injuries are impartial and no individual can be assumed to arrive to World Cup camp at peak health. But with the Women's World Cup in Brazil now fewer than nine months away — Spain had already booked their place while the US must still qualify through a regional tournament beginning next month — continuous recalibration in midfield, for reasons of circumstance and experimentation alike, and a corresponding lack of system clarity in all phases threatens to keep a viable contender from maximizing its potential against fellow heavyweights like Spain.