After finishing in third place at Dominican Republic 2024, USA are determined to go one stage further at the upcoming FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup™ and win the coveted trophy for the first time.
Katie Schoepfer’s players have every right to be confident after outscoring their opponents 17-0 in Concacaf qualifying, as they registered victories over Trinidad and Tobago, Honduras and El Salvador to punch their ticket to Morocco 2025.
The Americans have been drawn into Group C where they will face Ecuador, China PR and Norway. But they will have to make do without star player Kimmi Ascanio, a veteran of Dominican Republic 2024 who was not released by the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) play-off chasing San Diego Wave for the global finals.
Nonetheless, Schoepfer can call on four players with tournament experience in midfielders Jaiden Rodriguez and Scottie Antonucci, forward Micayla Johnson and Evan O’Steen, who won the adidas Golden Glove award as the best goalkeeper in last year’s global finals. The USA will also feature three NWSL pros in Johnson (Chicago Stars), Mak Whitham (Gotham FC) and KK Ream (Utah Royals).
Ahead of her second stint at the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup, Schoepfer spoke to FIFA about her thoughts on USA’s group-stage opponents, key takeaways from Dominican Republic 2024 and the expansion of the tournament.
Katie Schoepfer: Whenever we represent US Soccer, we want to compete for medals and have a successful tournament. But also part of my job is to zoom out and define success for these players as how we prepare them for future endeavors with the women’s national team — so giving them that exposure on a world stage, what a world tournament is like, what is it like to qualify out of group stages and into knockout rounds.
There are a number of layers to it but always with a new group we treat them as they are one of one. We’re looking at this as a unique group so we give them that unique experience into the tournament.
It’s exciting as we anticipate all three of them to play three different styles of play, which I think is the really cool and unique part of the World Cup for these players. For our girls, all of them play in the USA at varying levels but it’s a lot of the same and they play a lot of teams that mimic one another. But to play on a world stage where countries will have their own style of play, and in our group games be exposed to three distinct, different styles, I think will be a really cool challenge to take what we have learned and see how the players are able to use the tools we have given them to solve problems in different ways.
One of the big things we have talked about is how Concacaf is getting so much better in providing a much harder challenge. The thing that impressed me the most about our team was just their resilience and their ability to stick with a game plan while also trying new solutions. Every team, if you look at the timings at when the scoring started to get a little bit higher, it wasn’t until the 60th, 70th, 80th minute of games. It required all of us to be very diligent with how we were attacking and not panicking when we were tied 0-0 or just 1-0 up at half-time, and how we can make little adjustments and put that trust on them. They know the game plan, they trust the game plan but they are also going to put their own spin on it to figure out solutions to problems.
I think it’s massive. When we put players up an age group, it doesn’t guarantee them anything for the following year. But Evan, Scottie, Jaiden and Micayla have earned their spot on the roster again and they have put themselves in a position where last year they were maybe watching and not contributing as much, but this year now they have put themselves where we can lean on their experiences. It’s one thing to tell players the emotions they are going to feel and what it’s going to be like, but it’s completely different when we can have their peers tell them.
One big thing I learned last year is that I was going through it with the players, we were all brand new to the World Cup. But this year we have varying levels of experience, which I think is going to help massively on and off the field.
Kimmi is an unbelievable player and that is a credit to her that she has made herself invaluable at her club which is making a push for a play-off spot. That is their right that they have a plan for her to decide what is best. It doesn’t change how we feel about her and what she is, but I’m really happy with the players that we have and excited for them. It’s going to be a great tournament and we are going to miss her for sure, but she also had a great tournament last year and it’s been exciting watching her being able to contribute meaningful minutes for her NWSL team over the past season.
The biggest one for me, especially when it comes to tournament soccer, is just not getting too high or too low. We lost our opening game to Spain (in 2024) and if you talked to any of the players after the game, I don’t know what their mindset was but we really talked about how not everything is going to go our way. But when something does go our way — (such as) when we’re able to get a really good result against (Korea Republic) — we can’t get too high with those results and that it’s really a game-at-a-time mentality.
It’s an amazing opportunity for countries and girls, females and women everywhere to be able to contribute back into the game. For us it’s how many of these teams and young players can get exposure. Getting on a world stage is unbelievable and the fact that we get to do it every year is just going to be producing more and more players with this world experience. There’s nothing like a World Cup and it’s hard to replicate those nerves and feelings and being a long way from home anywhere else.
The more players that we can give the opportunities to, the better the end result will be in five, ten years when all of these girls are representing their women’s national teams and we’re having really competitive World Cups. I think it’s going to keep building off of itself from there.
