• U.S. women’s soccer coach Emma Hayes is determined to test her players against elite-level competition in preparation for next summer’s World Cup.
• The Americans won just three of seven recent matches against elite international teams — a deliberate test as global rivals have closed the gap on U.S. superiority in women’s soccer.
• Hayes believes the U.S. is no longer the hunted but the hunter as it looks to upset top teams from Spain, England and Brazil in the World Cup.

When Emma Hayes took over the women’s national soccer team two years ago, she had less than two months to get it ready for the Paris Olympics. So with time short, she motivated her players by telling them stories, including one about how ultra marathoners push through pain.

“For me, simplicity was critical,” she said. “I didn’t waste time.”

That plan worked, with the U.S. digging deep to win its final four games, each by a single goal, en route to Olympic gold.

Hayes has had a much longer window to prepare for next summer’s World Cup, so she’s ditched the storytelling in favor of hands-on teaching. The lesson, however, is pretty much the same: winning won’t be easy because the rest of the world has caught up to the U.S.

And it’s a lesson she taught by scheduling seven consecutive games against three of the top seven teams in the world. The U.S. winning just three of those games wasn’t a disaster; it was the point.

“The last thing you want is to go into a World Cup and see these teams for the first time,” Hayes said before this month’s 2-0 loss to top-ranked Spain, the reigning world champion.

“If I’m here to merely protect a record,” she said later, “then I’ll pick a lesser opponent.”

Before back-to-back games with Spain — games which ended in a loss and a draw — the U.S. split two games with No. 7 Brazil in Brazil, site of the next World Cup, and won two of three against fifth-ranked Japan. The opponents — and the trip to South America — combined to give the Americans a good idea of what to expect next year.

Those environments are very hard to replicate, and the games in Brazil, in front of huge, hostile crowds, were an especially important part of the preparation.

“I think our players need opportunities like this because they just simply don’t get it in domestic football,” Hayes said.

Jill Ellis was the first U.S. coach to attack the idea of scheduling tougher opponents. In response, U.S. Soccer created its own women’s tournament, the SheBelieves Cup, which not only produced much-needed revenue, but gave Ellis’ team the chance to play top-ranked foes including England, Germany, France, Japan and Brazil.

Hayes has doubled down on that philosophy, with the U.S. playing just four of its last 20 games against teams ranked outside the top 25.

“It’s part of the process, part of the plan,” defender Emily Fox told reporters. “Playing a team like Spain, the best in the world, was such a huge test for us.”

It wasn’t long ago that the only way the U.S. could get tested was by playing an intrasquad game. Between 2017 and 2021, the Americans lost just once in 72 games. They followed that with three unbeaten streaks of at least 20 games and spent most of that time ranked No. 1 in the world.

But in the last half-dozen years, several countries have made massive financial and cultural investments in women’s soccer, closing the gap to the U.S. English sponsors have poured significant capital into that country’s Women’s Super League, Barcelona has single-handedly sparked a revolution at the club level in Spain, French clubs Lyon and Paris Saint-Germain have spent heavily on international talent and infrastructure, and the Chinese government is backing state-run academies and training programs for women and girls.

As a result, Spain has spent the last 15 months atop the FIFA world rankings, while England has won the last two European Championships. So when the World Cup kicks off in Rio de Janeiro in June, the U.S., the four-time champion, won’t be favored to win.

The game has changed, so the U.S., Hayes insists, has to change with it.

“We talk so much about four stars on our crest which, of course, have absolutely been earned,” Hayes said on the “Men in Blazers” podcast earlier this month. “We talk about the rest of the world chasing us, right? I don’t know why we say that. Because I think it’s us chasing the rest of the world.

“We’re not world champions. Spain are. We’re the chasers. We can’t just do what we’ve always done. ... What got us here won’t get us to the next place. You absolutely cannot think that what we’ve done previously is enough. What got us to the Olympics won’t get us towards the World Cup.”

That’s the lesson Hayes has been teaching since her team climbed down from the top step of the medal podium in Paris two years ago: Standing in place doesn’t count as progress and playing opponents you’re supposed to beat doesn’t make you better.

We’ll find out next year in Brazil whether it has taken hold.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.