The US Women's National Team, she believes Cup roster is here and it's got a little bit more of a mix of names than you might expect. Hello, everybody. Welcome to this week's edition of the late sub. I am your host, Claire Watkins. It is Tuesday, February 17th. And just this morning, we got word of the 26 player roster for the U.S. that will be competing in this marches,

the first week of Marches, she believes.

Cup.

We've got some NWSL rising stars.

We've got the return of the European stars.

We have a fair helping of absences explained by Emma Hayes this morning, which is going to lead

to some really interesting looks and combinations on the field.

So let's break it down.

Let's jump in.

If you can believe it, the U.S. women's national team is back again, just like we left them,

with a new She Believes Cup roster for their three games at

the beginning of March. There were 26 players called in this morning to be named to 23 player

game day rosters. That's a slight tweak. Usually they call in 23. This year they're calling in 26 to

name 23 to game day for each of their three games against

Argentina, Canada, and Colombia. We're seeing Europe-based players returning to the mix after

that all end of USL January camp with kind of this real deadline continuously approaching

before November's World Cup qualifying tournament. Now before we dig into some of the names that

stand out from each positional line, I want to hit some notes that we got from Emma Hayes this morning. I actually found this press conference to be one of the most informative ones we've had in a while, because there were a lot of questions about who is on the roster, who's not on the roster, and why. So we're going to talk about some absences and Hayes's explanation for why these players were not on the roster and then we're going to talk about who is. So always take Hayes' answers with a grain of salt. I don't think she's always giving too much away. But this is what she told us about what these players, kind of the players that you're not seeing on this roster, where they are in their return to play. So starting with the big one, Sophia Wilson is not on this roster.

Hayes says that she's not in a place in her return to play protocol to get minutes with the U.S. just yet. Hayes noted that Portland had the final word on that. So the Portland Thorne said she's not ready. US honored that. Katerina Macario is also not on this roster. Hay says that her understanding understanding is that Macario is dealing with a heel injury and she specifically said that Macario was not available to be selected for this

particular camp. Reading between the lines, as we all know from some of the reporting last week or actually

through the last couple of weeks is that Macario is kind of in this transient place with Chelsea.

She's definitely working on a transfer of some kind at the end of the year, if not sooner. She's figuring out where she's going to land if that's going to be in Europe or if she's going to make the leap to the end of USL. Hayes openly said that if these two were available, Macario and Wilson, they would be the team's center forwards for this tournament. So these two are out

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