USA Women's Football Team Player Alex Morgan Believes Losing Teaches More than Winning.

The USA is targeting a third consecutive Women’s World Cup victory, but faces tough competition from England and other strong European teams. If successful, they will be the first men’s or women’s team to win three consecutive World Cups. Despite criticism of their preparation and performances, veteran player, Alex Morgan, believes that the US has the “best team we’ve ever had” and is confident they can win. However, she acknowledged England’s threat, stating that “the Euro champs, England, are definitely a team to be watching for.” Morgan attributes England’s success to work behind the scenes, including improvements in their domestic league, increased focus by their federation on the women's program, and better pay and working conditions.

Morgan, who has scored 121 goals for the US, believes that the team has the necessary talent, quality, and mentality to win. She is in top form and feels supported both on and off the field as a player and a mother – five moms are in the current squad. While there have been some setbacks in preparation, including losses last year to England, Germany and Spain, Morgan believes that playing top opponents was necessary to test the team and prepare for the World Cup.

“We were coming off the end of a very long season. We didn’t have all of our players. But at the end of the day, you can’t make excuses, and you have to compete. We didn’t get the job done a couple of times. But I feel like because of those three games, we’ve actually grown stronger from that. We’ve learned a lot from that.”

According to Morgan, failure is what drove the US toward their back-to-back titles in 2015 and 2019.

“I think that [losing] has really helped us in our success previously, and it’s going to help us in the World Cup. Because I think that you always learn so much more from losing than winning,” she says.

“2011 is one of the biggest heartbreaks, I feel like, in program history and in my career history, losing to penalties to Japan in that World Cup [final]. And I feel like we took 2015 and 2019 as: ‘We’re not going to let 2011 happen to us again.’ We felt like we were deserving and kind of let it go out of our hands. And so I feel like you learn so much more from the games where you don’t find yourself on top.”

It’s been more than a decade since the US last lost a World Cup game. But they’ve lost plenty more in that span. That includes, most recently, their in-form forward Mallory Swanson.

Even without Swanson, the US will still be among the top contenders at this World Cup. But contending isn’t enough. For Morgan and this US team, anything short of winning it all is failure. And as Morgan herself points out, the US will need to prove they deserve to win, again. No matter the circumstances.