Sophia Smith is a shining light for a foggy USWNT in opening win at FIFA World Cup

Mike DeCourcy

Sophia Smith is a shining light for a foggy USWNT in opening win at FIFA World Cup image

The one way to view the U.S. women's national team's performance against Vietnam from an exclusively positive perspective is to consider only the player who wore the No. 11 jersey and a crisply assembled ponytail.

So long as you are talking about Sophia Smith, superlatives and smiles are warranted.

Smith, 22, entered her first game at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup — the first World Cup game of her career — as the last player standing of the three that were positioned to reinvent the United States' front line. And thus she carried a weighty burden to serve as the team’s primary source of offense. In an opening 3-0 Group E victory over Vietnam in Auckland, New Zealand, she had a direct role in every single goal. Smith fulfilled her job description.

“I feel good. I came in today with the mindset that I’ll do whatever it takes to help this team win, and tonight that’s what it was,” Smith told Fox Sports afterward. “I’m happy with where we are, but … I think we have a little more in us.”

Yeah, so, you see, she opened the door. We were trying to be entirely positive, but it was Smith who said, “we have a little more in us.” She was euphemizing, too. A little more? If it were only a little, they could board the plane for home now.

No, it’s a lot more.

MORE: Who are the five best players on the 2023 USA World Cup team? 

“The win is huge. That’s how you want to start out a tournament,” three-time World Cup veteran Julie Ertz, who started in central defense rather than her customary midfield role, told Fox Sports. “Obviously, you’ll watch the film, you go back you learn from it and you continue to grow. But a win is huge, it’s everything, and that was our main goal. Especially to kind of start out, and to have a win helps with momentum, for sure.”

Ertz acknowledged, though, the obvious deficiencies: “I think finishing our chances, for sure. I know that we had some opportunities that we didn’t finish. Those were the opportunities for us that we need to have going further in the tournament. And I think just thinking on the ball.”

The U.S. players managed to appear pleased when it was over, perhaps relieved that they’d all become soccer players rather than gymnasts. On the balance beam, you look this sloppy, you not only lose, you fall to the floor. And that can hurt.

There aren’t style points in soccer, though, just that incessant conversation about whether this team or that “deserved” to win.

Well, the USWNT scored three more goals than Vietnam, so they deserved to win. They could have scored well more than three goals, though. FotMob.com listed the Americans with six “big chances” blown. That’s twice as many chances as missed by any of the other 11 teams that had completed a World Cup game through Friday night.

This was the sort of performance that makes it comforting to have a command of the team’s history. Because there were times in 2015, in a 1-0 group victory over Nigeria and another by that score against China in the quarterfinals, that the USWNT did not look like a World Cup winner. And, by the end, they were shredding the Japan defense for five goals.

The number of wasted chances against Vietnam mattered, as things stand, because goal differential is a tiebreaker in the World Cup, and winning the group appears to be extremely important based on the draw presented to the USWNT.

MORE: Why the USWNT need Smith to emerge as the team's star in FIFA World Cup

If they finish first ahead of the Netherlands, Portugal and Vietnam, and if all the other highly ranked teams take their groups, as expected, the U.S. would not have to face a team ranked in the top 10 until the semifinals. Finishing second likely means opposing No. 3 Sweden in the Round of 16 and No. 6 Spain in the quarters.

It would have helped if more players had been as proficient and efficient in the Vietnam penalty area as Smith, who scored her first with a solid shot after striker Alex Morgan laid off a one-touch pass directly to Smith on the left side in the 14th minute. The second was struck sharply in first-half added time and traveled directly between the legs of goalkeeper Tran Thi Kim Thanh. The third goal resulted when Smith ran down a ball before it crossed the end line and fired it back into the center of the box for captain Lindsey Horan, whose shot easily found the back of the net.

Along the way, there were dreadful flubs of beckoning opportunities from Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and right back Emily Fox, and there were near-misses by midfielder Rose Lavelle, Savannah DeMelo and Horan. And Morgan had both on the same play, botching a penalty kick opportunity earned by Rodman in the first half, and then misfiring wide when the rebound was deflected directly back to her.

MORE: Why the 2023 World Cup is a dream event for Julie Ertz

Smith talked before the World Cup about being excited, not nervous, about starting her first major tournament. Afterward, she admitted she was “relieved” to get through the opener.

“I was a little bit anxious coming into the tournament, so it’s a good to have a game under our belt and kind of get a feel for it, and know what to expect,” Smith said. “But we know the next two games are going to be hard. We’re going to celebrate this for a second, but then put our focus into the next game.”

If it’s more than a second, it’ll be too much. The U.S. left the stadium with the three standings points accorded every soccer victory, and yet the game still managed to be a mathematical disappointment.

Mike DeCourcy

Mike DeCourcy Photo

Mike DeCourcy has been the college basketball columnist at The Sporting News since 1995. Starting with newspapers in Pittsburgh, Memphis and Cincinnati, he has written about the game for 35 years and covered 32 Final Fours. He is a member of the United States Basketball Writers Hall of Fame and is a studio analyst at the Big Ten Network and NCAA Tournament Bracket analyst for Fox Sports. He also writes frequently for TSN about soccer and the NFL. Mike was born in Pittsburgh, raised there during the City of Champions decade and graduated from Point Park University.