Soccer newsletter: Alex Morgan proves she still belongs on the big stage

MONTERREY, Mexico — Hello and welcome to the weekly L.A. Times soccer newsletter. I’m Kevin Baxter, The Times’ soccer writer, and this week we look at the hot time that was had in Monterrey during the CONCACAF W Championship, at the massive overhaul underway within the Mexican soccer federation, at Southern California’s two hot-and-cold MLS teams and at how the Supreme Court is impacting the NWSL’s expansion plans.

But we start in Mexico with the women’s regional qualifying competition for both the 2023 World Cup and Paris Olympics. CONCACAF’s slogan for the tournament was “We Belong,” though I’m not sure whether it was intended as a statement or a plea.

Either way it felt demeaning.

Just imagine CONCACAF attaching the slogan to the men’s qualifying event and telling Christian Pulisic, Memo Ochoa and Alphonso Davies that they belong.

Alex Morgan didn’t take it as an insult though. At 33, seemingly on the back nine of her career, Morgan came into this tournament determined to prove she still deserved to be on the national team. She did that and more, with her penalty-kick goal Monday giving the U.S. a 1-0 win over Canada in the tournament final, earning the Americans CONCACAF’s long automatic berth in the 2024 Paris Olympics and avenging their last loss, which came against Canada 19 games ago, in the semifinals of the Tokyo Olympics.

Both the U.S. and Canada, along with Jamaica and Costa Rica, also qualified for the 2023 World Cup simply by reaching the tournament semifinals

For Morgan, the goal Monday also capped a stellar two weeks that saw her win the Golden Ball as the competition’s best player while tying for the tournament lead with three goals.

“Alex is a big player and big players are forged for big moments,” U.S. women’s team coach Vlatko Andonovski said. “She’s a winner.”

Still, after last summer’s Tokyo Olympics, where the U.S. fielded the oldest team in the tournament, Andonovski embarked on an ambitious rebuilding project and Morgan was among those passed over for the first few series for friendlies.

The games in the W Championship counted though. So he immediately called Morgan back into the fold.

“Alex is a better player,” Andonovski said. “What makes her special is that she doesn’t want to stop growing. She doesn’t want to stop developing. She wants to she wants to sophisticate her game in any way possible.

“And she has been doing that day in and day out.”

For country and club: Morgan also has a career-high 11 goals for her NWSL expansion team, the San Diego Wave.

“I just feel good overall. I’m happy, I’m healthy, I’m confident,” said Morgan, who took a nearly year-long break to have a baby before the Tokyo Games. “I just feel like I’m able to contribute exactly what’s being asking of me.”

Part of that ask is leadership. And now that she’s older, wiser and a mom, she’s embraced her role as a mentor for her younger teammates, something she had shied away from previously.

“They’re just hungry. They’re lethal. These players are making a name for themselves at a young age,” said Morgan, who is enjoying molding them. “It’s incredible to see. This experience is going to go a long way for them when you look at the next years.”

Or more.

“The younger ones are following their footsteps,” Andonovski said of veterans such as Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn. “We’re moving in the right direction. It is very obvious that the team is significantly younger than the previous time we played Canada. We changed five players.

“And those players are going to be here for at least three, maybe four World Cups. So get used to them.”

Pencil Morgan in for at least one more. She’s proved she belongs.

Women’s game deserves a better showcase

Monterrey was a sweatbox for most of the two-week CONCACAF W Championship, and there’s little doubt the weather affected the quality of play, although there were few complaints from players.

Neither of those things — the sauna-like conditions nor the stoic attitude of the players — should come as a surprise. The average summer highs in Monterrey hover near 100 degrees and it can stay uncomfortably hot late into the evening, which is why there were two hydration breaks during the first half of Thursday’s United States-Costa Rica semifinal, a 3-0 victory for the Americans.

At times, it was hotter in Monterrey last week than it was in Doha, Qatar — and the summer temperatures there are so brutal that FIFA took the unprecedented step of moving this year’s World Cup back five months.

“The heat,” Canadian coach Bev Priestman said after the semifinals, “is extreme.”

And her game started at 9 p.m. local time.

This wasn’t the first time — and it won’t be the last — that soccer’s regional and global governing bodies asked the women to play in conditions they have prohibited for the men. In 2014, a group of players, including U.S. stars Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan, unsuccessfully sued FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Assn. over the decision to use artificial-turf fields for the 2015 Women’s World Cup. The surface is banned for use in the men’s game.

As for this week’s tournament, CONCACAF’s marquee women’s event never was supposed to be held in Monterrey in July. The original plan was to play the games in Guadalajara, which has an average July high of 82 degrees, but when that city had to back out, Monterrey stepped up. The temperatures in Guadalajara would have been milder, but the city is nearly a mile above sea level. That also would have affected play adversely.

Either way, the players deserve better.

The women’s game still is building a fan base in many parts of the world. Providing teams with the best possible conditions to showcase their talents will help with that, and it did not happen in this tournament.

But at least FIFA has moved to level the playing field. Last month, it chose Monterrey as one of the sites for the 2026 men’s World Cup, meaning group-play games in that competition will be held in the same conditions the women experienced this month. World Cup games also will be played in Houston, Dallas and Miami, cities well known for summer heat and humidity.

When and where to play top international soccer matches is becoming a complicated issue, especially as the effects of climate change increase. Just look at the record temperatures in Europe this week. If either of the two continental bids for the 2030 World Cup is successful, that tournament could be played in July temperatures warmer than Monterrey. Perhaps a fall tournament will become commonplace going forward.

In CONCACAF, staging events such as the Gold Cup, the final rounds of the Nations League, and women’s World Cup and Olympic qualifying in the United States is a no-brainer.

But playing every major tournament in the United States stunts the development of the game throughout the region. Why shouldn’t Mexico be allowed to host the women’s qualifiers? Why not Costa Rica or Jamaica, other countries with blossoming women’s programs?

Doing that brings a tradeoff, though. Play a summer CONCACAF event in Mexico or Central America and you will play in hot, humid weather in which the quality of play probably will suffer. Keep the events in the United States and you limit the growth of the game.

FIFA apparently is willing to make the tradeoffs , as it will have staged two of its last four World Cups in South Africa and Qatar by the end of this year. Still, there are common-sense solutions that can make those tradeoffs more palatable. When FIFA found itself with a World Cup in the Middle East, it took the unprecedented step of moving the games to the fall. That was a clear admission that playing in oppressive conditions that aren’t conducive to good soccer does nothing but hurt the game.

CONCACAF should consider adding flexibility to its calendar rather than wasting opportunities to showcase some of the strongest, most competitive women’s teams in the world. The players and the sport deserve that much.

Poor results have consequences in Mexico

Tata Martino keeps his coaching job for now.

(Kevin Baxter / Los Angeles Times)

Less than 24 hours after Mexico exited last week’s CONCACAF W Championship without a win or a goal — the second disastrous showing for a Mexican national team in less than two weeks — the president of the country’s national soccer federation announced the start of a long-anticipated housecleaning.

Out are Gerardo Torrado, the federation’s sporting director; Ignacio Hierro, the national team’s director; and Luis Pérez, coach of the U-20 team that failed to qualify for either the U-20 World Cup or 2024 Paris Olympics. Yon de Luisa, the federation’s president, said the national team program also will be restructured and will, for the first time, include sporting directors for both the men’s and women’s teams, similar to the model used by the U.S. Soccer Federation.

“Not qualifying for two World Cups and two Olympic Games was what triggered this decision, but there were some indications of operations that were not at the level we were looking for,” De Luisa said. “The adjustments are aimed at avoiding results like those obtained in recent weeks and to strengthen the performance of our women’s and men’s teams.”

Mexico hasn’t won a title of any kind since the COVID-19 pandemic started, with its last trophy coming in the 2019 Gold Cup.

Torrado, a former national team star who has been sporting director since 2017, confirmed his resignation on Twitter.

“Today I step aside and assume full responsibility for the recent results,” he wrote. “I take this experience as an opportunity to grow as a person and as a professional.”

Keeping his job for now is Tata Martino, coach of the men’s senior national team, which will open play in the World Cup in four months. Martino’s team also has been underperforming lately in winning just six of its last 16 games dating to October and scoring multiple goals in just six of those matches.

Martino is under contract until after the World Cup, and De Luisa said “that commitment remains intact.”

But more changes likely are coming.

The fate of Mónica Vergara, coach of the women’s national team, which also failed to qualify for the World Cup and Olympics, will be determined by the incoming sporting director. De Luisa said he expects to make that hire shortly.

In the last 18 months, De Luisa has overseen an unprecedented investment in the women’s national team. De Luisa named Vergara to head the senior team, Maribel Domínguez to manage the U-20s and Ana Galindo to coach the U-17s. It’s the first time Mexico’s top three women’s national teams have been coached by females.

LAFC takes a step forward, Galaxy slip further back

LAFC’s Giorgio Chiellini, left, and Nashville’s Hany Mukhtar chase the ball.

(Mark Humphrey / Associated Press)

LAFC has been the best team in MLS for most of the season, leading the league in points and wins. But on Sunday, the team arguably got a little better with the debuts of defender Giorgio Chiellini and striker Gareth Bale.

Chiellini, a longtime Italian national team captain and a player one former coach has called the best defender of his era, started in a 2-1 victory over Nashville and went 60 minutes. He proved good from the start, keeping pace with Nashville’s Hany Mukhtar on a breakaway in the 12th minute and forcing Mukhtar into a cross that led to nothing.

“For me it’s just preseason, but it’s not preseason because it’s very important now, these three points,” said Chiellini, who was playing for the first time in more than a month.

A dozen minutes after Chiellini’s departure, Bale, who will captain Wales in its first World Cup in 64 years this fall, came on to play 18 minutes. He failed to take a shot, and LAFC ran out the clock. But the summer heat and humidity was something he didn’t expect despite watching a lot of MLS on television.

“You don’t really get to see the heat on TV,” he said. “The humidity was very difficult, even in the warmup. It’s something that I’m not used to. But we’re all up for these challenges. Everyone has to deal with it.”

Chiellini and Bale joined a roster that already included former league most valuable player Carlos Vela, Canadian national team goalkeeper Maxime Crepeau and MLS all-stars Ilie Sánchez and Diego Palacios.

None of those players contributed to the scoring Sunday, which came from Cristian Arango and José Cifuentes. Arango’s goal in the 27th minute was his team-leading eighth of the season and sixth in his last seven games for LAFC, which has lost once in MLS play in the last two months.

“Credit to LAFC and the organization. It put together an amazing roster, a very deep one,” coach Steve Cherundolo said. “It’s one we’ve gotten to know, and we know how to use it.”

The Galaxy’s Julian Araujo, left, looks to slow down Colorado’s Diego Rubio.

(David Zalubowski / Associated Press)

The Galaxy, meanwhile, are heading in the other direction, with Saturday’s 2-0 defeat at Colorado marking the team’s third loss in a row and fifth in six games, counting a U.S. Open Cup loss to the Sacramento Republic of the second-tier USL Championship. At 8-9-3, the team has a losing record for the first time in the Greg Vanney era and is above the Western Conference playoff line only by virtue of a tiebreaker.

And that’s apparently causing some fissures within the squad.

“We’re not playing as a team. There’s a lot of people playing as individuals,” defender Derrick Williams told Spectrum’s Nikki Kay after the game. “The manager gives us clear instructions, and there’s times where people don’t want to do that.

“I feel for the staff because they put so much work in and then when it comes to the game, some people just have their own agendas. It’s frustrating, and we can’t just keep going on like this. It’s not good enough. We’re sick of losing. It’s just not good enough.”

Part of the problem could be slow starts. The Galaxy have conceded the first goal in 11 of their last 15 games in all competitions and won just two of those.

“We are all disappointed with the performance tonight because tonight’s performance is, I don’t think, a real representation of who we are as a team,” midfielder Sacha Kljestan said. “So yeah, we’ve got some work to do.

“We’re just lacking a little bit of confidence right now.”

The Galaxy also were lacking captain Javier “Chicharito” Hernández to the league’s COVID-19 protocols for a second game in a row and that showed, with the team putting just two of its 18 shots on goal while getting shut out for the third time this season.

Colorado’s goals came from Diego Rubio in the first half and former Galaxy striker Gyasi Zardes in the second. Vanney blamed the Galaxy’s recent struggles on a lack of cohesion that results in players getting disconnected from one another, which created space for the Rapids to operate.

“Some of our mistakes are just sometimes either a passiveness or, in the moment, we’re just maybe a little bit shellshocked or lacking a little confidence,” he said. “So it’s just getting those pieces back together because we made a few mistakes, and I think guys are feeling the weight of making those mistakes individually.”

Abortion rights to figure into NWSL expansion choices

Jessica Berman, commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League, announced plans last week for “sustained investments to serve our league,” among them expansion to 14 teams by 2024. And the recent Supreme Court decision striking down abortion rights could play a big part in where those new teams are located.

In the wake of the court’s ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 20 states have adopted or are about to adopt bans on abortion, and Berman said that will be a factor in the league’s decision on expansion.

“We have to look at that not just from an expansion perspective, but really even our current landscape,” Berman said during a conference call Thursday. “It’s one of the things that we’re actually analyzing, looking even at our current markets to see where we have some differentiation between our values and what we stand behind relative to where we have teams located, and what are the solutions we can put in place that we feel comfortable we can commit to and execute on.

“So certainly in the context of expansion, that would be part of the analysis.”

Three current NWSL teams — the Houston Dash, Racing Louisville and the Orlando Pride — play in states where abortion rights have been restricted or are being challenged in court.

And finally there’s this …

After winning eight consecutive Bundesliga championships and five consecutive league scoring titles, Robert Lewandowski is leaving Bayern Munch for Barcelona on a reported $50-million transfer. Lewandowski will turn 34 next month.

Quotebook

“I definitely think the perception is changing. A lot of players came over and really struggled and got a big wake-up call. I know the quality’s improving. I haven’t come here just to wind down. I want to try to contribute as much as I can to this team, try to win games and trophies.”

LAFC’s Gareth Bale, on the perception of MLS in Europe