The United States women’s national team did not win the 2025 SheBelieves Cup, but this was the first time that failure to lift the trophy didn’t make for a disappointing tournament. While Emma Hayes probably wasn’t thrilled with her team’s performance in a 2-1 defeat to Japan, there were significantly more positives to take away from the competition than negatives.
Central midfield was the area of the pitch where Hayes likely learned the most about her players, and came away with the most optimism for the future. That’s where 17-year-old Lily Yohannes and 19-year-old Claire Hutton both turned in excellent performances. And just as important as their individual level, they looked as if they could form a perfect partnership in the future.
Despite winning the Olympic gold medal in 2024, midfield has been a question mark for the US in recent years. It’s a testament to the quality of the team’s forward and defensive lines that they’ve been able to accomplish so much without control in the center of the park, but Hayes is clearly looking to develop new talent in that area to give the team more balance and a new dimension.
The great 2019 World Cup winning team was anchored by holding midfielder Julie Ertz and box-to-box dynamo Samantha Mewis, who have both since retired. Expecting anyone to directly replace either player would be unreasonable. Ertz was one of the most athletic and aggressive ball-winners in the history of women’s soccer, while Mewis combined elite playmaking from deep with a 6ft frame and elite aerial presence.
But in Hutton and Yohannes, the USWNT have a young duo with extremely complementary skillsets in midfield, and abilities that fit Hayes’ preferred system perfectly.
For most of the tenures of the USWNT’s previous two permanent managers – Vlatko Andonovski and Jill Ellis – the team utilized a 4-3-3 formation with a single holding midfielder. Hayes has seemed to prefer a 4-2-3-1 setup with a double pivot. This can lead to the team getting one fewer player into the box in attack, but has a couple of positive tradeoffs. The center forward has had much more support from an attacking midfielder who starts closer to goal, and there’s an extra midfielder in a deep-lying position to slow down opposing counterattacks.
Most coaches favor a midfield partnership with one player who is an excellent ball-winner and another who is an excellent passer in this setup, though it’s arguably more important for the midfielders to be well rounded in a double pivot shape than in the formation that Andonovski and Ellis favored. In Hutton and Yohannes, Hayes appears to have an ideal pairing of a defensive midfielder who’s solid on the ball, and a deep-lying playmaker who’s defensively proficient.
Hutton looked extremely composed and ready for a big role in her first career cap against Australia. It wasn’t particularly surprising given that she’s already got plenty of experience – Hutton logged 1,653 minutes in NWSL last season for Kansas City Current and started the playoff semi-final.
And in her rookie season, Hutton was consistently one of NWSL’s best ball-winners. She averaged 5.23 tackles + interceptions per 90 minutes, good for 95th percentile among midfielders in the top nine competitions in FBRef’s database. These also aren’t empty challenges; Hutton is 95th percentile for defensive actions that lead to shots.
While Hutton appears very technically solid, the available data suggests that she still has quite a bit of room for improvement as a passer. FBRef has her 41st percentile for pass completion percentage, and it’s not because she’s trying a lot of high-difficulty passes. She’s well above average as a short passer, but 53rd percentile for long pass completion percentage, 53rd percentile for progressive passes, and 54th percentile for passes completed into the final third. During the upcoming NWSL season, the thing Hayes will be watching for most from Hutton will be whether she can increase her range of passing.
Yohannes has a completely different set of strengths and weaknesses. At 17, she’s remarkably already a world class passer, having gotten involved in two goals during SheBelieves Cup with excellent medium-length passes from the middle third of the pitch into the final third. FBRef doesn’t carry data on the Dutch Eredivise, where Yohannes currently plays with Ajax, but even the most dogmatic of statheads can watch Yohannes and concede that she’s already the most gifted playmaker in the USWNT setup.
But Yohannes also went long spells without influencing the game against Japan, which is to be expected for a 17-year-old facing a top opponent. As Hayes put it in her post-match press conference:
[Yui] Hasegawa in the middle of the park is probably the best pivot in the world at both the domestic and international level, and our pivot is 17 years of age and has played in three caps. So we have to be patient too, in our expectations.
Certainly no one was disappointed in Yohannes’ performance against Japan, but it still highlighted what she needs to improve at to become one of the best midfielders in the world, and a player that Hayes picks for important competitive matches.
At a listed height of 5ft 8in (and, admittedly an uneducated guess, but currently looking taller than when US Soccer put that number out a year ago), Yohannes clearly has the frame to develop into a physical presence in midfield. Her passing is good enough to justify her inclusion in the team even if she does not become a stronger defensive player, but that feels like an inevitable outcome from her maturing physically and likely moving from Ajax to a team in a more competitive league.
If there was one slightly disappointing thing about the USWNT at SheBelieves Cup, it’s that we didn’t get the opportunity to see what Hutton and Yohannes can do together. It’s very understandable that Hayes wanted to partner each of her youngsters with another midfielder who’s older and more experienced, but it’s very easy to envision a future where they’re a starting partnership.
Hayes already had a strong hypothesis about what she had in Hutton and Yohannes, but this tournament offered a massive data point in support. The USWNT learned that they have two excellent youngsters who can give their midfield something they’ve been missing.