Bill Simmons Fires Shot At USWNT, Alex Morgan After World Cup Loss

Bill Simmons traditionally offered his half-baked analysis of the United States women’s national team every World Cup cycle, and that continued Monday.

The Ringer founder broke a six-week hiatus when he released a two-part podcast, and one of the six topics was the USWNT’s premature elimination in the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

Sweden eliminated the USWNT in the round of 16 on Sunday. Despite multiple tactical reasons why it failed to get the job done, analysts and detractors have looked toward off-field reasons why the United States didn’t become the first men’s or women’s team to win three straight World Cups.

Alexi Lalas believed the focus on politics and social causes were among the reasons why the United States lost and could become irrelevant, even though those traits were not unique to this year’s World Cup team.

Simmons agreed with Carli Lloyd’s criticism of the USWNT after its last Group E match against Portugal, which again, had nothing to do with the on-field product. And Simmons, who isn’t renowned for his soccer analysis, took a similar approach.

“This team, you could see it before the Vietnam game when it was like, look at the new Nike suits. Look at these new suits,” Simmons said, per Awful Announcing’s Sam Neumann. “And they’re all styling as they head into the locker room. They’re running commercials and every player has a commercial. There’s players that have never done anything that have commercials. And the vibe was just off …

“We did the usual thing that we’ve been doing since 2019, 2015 of ‘Oh well, they almost scored a bunch of times. Oh, if that would have got in or oh, some bad luck.'”

Like Lalas, Simmons’ criticism had nothing to do with what happened on the field. Commercialism has grown dramatically in sports, but it’s only bad if you lose. And it wouldn’t be the first time a team’s loss would be blamed for small margins, bad luck or a bad bounce — just ask the Philadelphia 76ers when Kawhi Leonard hit a buzzer-beater in Game 7 in 2019.

But Simmons took a specific shot at Alex Morgan, who USWNT fans also would agree didn’t play up to her standards in this year’s tournament. However, Simmons went a different route in his critique.

“It’s like being on an AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization) team that your kid’s on and the coach is playing somebody at striker and everyone’s like, ‘Why don’t they play Sally at striker instead of the coach’s daughter? Well you know, she’s the coach’s daughter, she’s gotta play there.'”

Simmons added: “If you take away that Thailand game, she has scored two goals in the last 17 World Cup games. This is the striker. This is the one who’s supposed to be the most dangerous player on the field. Who is supposed to produce goals and she hasn’t produced goals since the mid-2010’s on the national level. And yet it’s Alex Morgan. She’s supposed to be the next one. We gotta keep propping her up, pretending she’s a superstar. She’s not a superstar. She’s really, honestly never been a superstar.”

Morgan should have played better. No one is arguing against that but to say Morgan has “never been a superstar” was off base and seemingly an attempt to create a narrative.

Should head coach Vlatko Andonovski tried to start Sophia Smith as the No. 9, which is her more natural position, with Trinity Rodman and Lynn Williams on the wings? Yes, but he didn’t and that likely had more to do with Morgan’s experience rather than being a “coach’s daughter,” which isn’t a new phenomenon in sports.

Simmons gave Megan Rapinoe a pass for being past her prime but not for Morgan. Again, the players deserve their fair share of blame for the USWNT’s World Cup exit, but that blame falls on what happened on the field and not outside factors.