Reflections from the 2023 World Cup

Players on the U.S. women’s national team soccer team are no strangers to making history. In fact, it’s kind of their thing.

The team has four World Cup titles under its belt, the most of any country. They’ve scored more World Cup goals than any other team.

They’ve spent more time atop the FIFA women’s world rankings than any other country.

In 2022, they won equal pay through a settlement with U.S. Soccer Federation. Male and female U.S. players now earn equal salaries, an effort that was many years in the making, but reached peak publicity during the 2019 World Cup.

You get the point.

At this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in New Zealand and Australia, the team did make history, but it wasn’t the kind of history they had in mind. The team made its earliest ever World Cup exit in the round of 16 – a far cry from the “three-peat” (three consecutive cup titles) it had set out for.