If You're Looking for a Beach Read, Consider Emma Cline's "The Guest"
PLUS: A FIFA Women's World Cup Preview
We first meet Alex during a swim in the ocean. She’s out beyond the break, floating on her back and soaking up the sun, just another young woman enjoying a late summer day, when she suddenly realizes she’s drifted far away from shore. Alex begins swimming back toward the beach, but gets nowhere. For an instant, she thinks this is the end. But then her instincts kick in:
Time to change course. She swam parallel to the shore. Her body took over, remembering the strokes. She didn’t allow for any hesitation. At some point, the water started resisting her with less force, and then she was moving along, getting closer to shore, and then close enough that her feet touched the sand.
She was out of breath, yes. Her arms were sore, her heartbeat juddered out of sync. She was much farther down the beach.
But fine—she was fine.
The fear was already forgotten.
No one on the shore noticed her, or looked twice. A couple walked past, heads bent, studying the sand for shells. A man in waders assembled a fishing pole. Laughter floated over from a group under a sun tent. Surely, if Alex had been in any real danger, someone would have reacted, one of these people would have stepped in to help.
But the truth is, no one did. No one even really sees her. Alex is on her own out here: Swim or sink.
Alex does a lot of swimming in Emma Cline’s excellent new novel, The Guest. Sometimes it’s for fun. Sometimes it’s an indulgence. Sometimes she uses a swim to cleanse herself or clear her mind. But remember that swimming, more than anything else, is about survival, staying afloat and cutting through the water until the swimmer can get her feet back on solid ground. Alex’s life, even when she isn’t in the water, is a marathon swim.
You may be familiar with Cline’s previous novel, The Girls, about a fourteen-year-old in 1969 who falls in with a group of free-spirited teenaged girls in the thrall of a Charles Manson-like figure. (You’ve surely seen the book if you’ve surveyed the “Summer Reads” stand in the main aisle of a Barnes & Noble.) The Girls explored an adolescent girl’s desperate desire to belong. Alex, the main character of The Guest, also wants to fit in, but not for personal psychological reasons associated with self-image, self-esteem, attachment, and acceptance. Fitting in fulfills a more basic need for Alex, as that is how she makes her way through the world, how she survives in places she does not belong (which is where Alex always is.) It’s why Alex, caught in a rip current, begins swimming parallel to the shore, working with the ocean to return to the beach.
Readers learn little about Alex’s background over the course of The Guest, which is fine, because the 22-year-old has essentially invented herself. Alex has come from nowhere to what is presumably New York City to fulfill the fantasies of wealthy men as an escort (“girls in drag as girls.”) These relationships are fleeting and an unstable source of income, however, eventually leading her to drop her rates and engage in risky behavior. She finds herself banned from certain restaurants and hotel bars. Her roommates have locked her out of their apartment for missing rent and stealing from them. Her work is also at times degrading and dangerous: Alex is ghosting a scary former client named Dom who keeps texting her about some money or drugs she took from him. It’s a relief, then, when Alex meets Simon, an art dealer who invites her to his posh Long Island home at the beginning of August.
Alex leads a charmed, carefree life in what readers can assume is the Hamptons. She spends her days swimming and in the evening accompanies Simon to dinner parties. A week before Labor Day, however, she commits a serious faux pas during a gathering at a rich neighbor’s home and Simon sends her back to the city. Facing homelessness and fearing Dom, Alex decides at the train station to stay on Long Island, find a way to survive for the week, and then show up at Simon’s Labor Day party, convinced Simon only needs some time alone and will welcome her back with open arms. The Guest is a countdown to Alex’s return.
The week isn’t easy for Alex. She has $400 in her bank account and her cellphone is waterlogged. She has to survive on her wits alone, ingratiating herself with people who can provide her with food and shelter for the night. Alex has a knack for sizing up social situations, cultivating trust among strangers, and insinuating herself into the lives of those she gloms onto. In particular, her work as an escort has taught her how to turn herself into the object of other people’s desires, to become what others need or sense they are missing so that they invite her into their lives, even if what she provides them with is a fantasy. Here’s Cline writing about Alex’s relationship with Simon:
She had not told Simon a lot of things. She’d learned early on that it was necessary to maintain some distance. Keep up a few untruths. It was easy, and then easier. And wasn’t it better to give people what they wanted? A conversation performed as a smooth transaction—a silky back-and-forth without the interruption of reality. Most everyone preferred the story. Alex had learned how to provide it, how to draw people in with a vision of themselves, recognizable but turned up ten degrees, amplified into something better. How to allude to her own desires as if they were shared desires. Somewhere, deep in their brains, the synapses fired, chugging along in the direction she set out for them. People were relieved, grateful to click in to something bigger, easier.
And it was good to be someone else. To believe, even for a half moment, that the story was different. Alex had imagined what kind of person Simon would like, and that was the person Alex told him she was. All Alex’s unsavory history excised until it started to seem, even to her, like none of it had ever happened.
Underlying Alex’s outlook is the belief that all relationships are transactional. Every one of her reactions, emotions, and gestures are fabricated for the consumption of those who can provide her with a meal or a place to stay. Additionally, she knows how to lead people on, to supply them with what they don’t yet know they want. She has embraced a key tenet of American capitalism: Find a dream and fill it.
Yet despite her plight, her resourcefulness, and her ability to survive in a world she has been expelled from, it remains hard to sympathize with Alex. I suspect many readers will even grow to deplore her. She often observes how easy it is to take advantage of people, particularly in settings where they put their faith in the good will of others. Because her interactions are always transactional, she probably leaves many of those who assume she’s being sincere devastated. Alex is also a terribly superficial person whose deepest thoughts and feelings and pangs of conscience are almost always overridden by a reductive drive to get ahead. As someone who deals in fantasies and appearances, she can’t dig into the substance of things, into what really matters and gives life meaning. Alex is a “fake it ‘til you make it” type; unfortunately for her, reality keeps catching up with her, and it’s not necessarily upsetting for the reader when it does.
One of the more troubling aspects of Alex’s character is that her marks aren’t the haughty rich of Long Island—those, like Simon, who have come to regard other people as disposable items—but the rich adjacent; in other words, people like Alex, individuals just trying to stay afloat in the waters of the island getaway the rich have built for themselves. They may be spoiled, but the college kids escaping to the beach and the unstable teenaged son of a record executive—all close to the same age as Alex—don’t deserve the emotional damage she inflicts on them. Meanwhile, the housekeeper, the nanny, and the bartender she targets are just trying to get by. Her manipulations and deceit could ruin them financially.
Just consider what Alex does to Nicholas in one of the novel’s standout chapters. After one of Alex’s schemes backfires, Nicholas happens to spot Alex walking along the side of the road and invites her back to the estate he manages for one of Simon’s art collector friends. Nicholas is a kind and generous man who makes Alex dinner and allows her to stay the night. We learn how devoted Nicholas is to his job, which keeps him away from his five-year-old daughter in Nevada for long stretches of time. Following a conversation in which Alex is stunned to learn Nicholas actually likes his employer, the two tour the house, where they stop to observe a work of art hanging on the wall. Alex reaches out to touch it and leaves behind a tiny scratch, crushing Nicholas. The act not only destroys the value of the artwork, but probably Nicholas’s livelihood as well.
Why would Alex do such a thing? Perhaps deep down she is a self-saboteur who believes she doesn’t deserve the beneficence of others or the good things that come her way. That would go a long way toward explaining why she committed the act that got her kicked out of Simon’s home. It could also be that Alex needs to function in survival mode and can’t stand it when her improvised life becomes too easy and settled. She admits, after all, that scratching the artwork gave her a bit of a thrill. Perhaps Alex has deluded herself into believing she can get away with these sorts of transgressions, that even when she swims out beyond the break she can always make it back to the shore. Or maybe she’s just an inherently childish person prone to behaving immaturely.
A more provocative reading is that Alex is bristling against the rules of class and wealth that keep someone like her from acquiring the economic stability she seeks. Alex would likely be satisfied if she could permanently ensconce herself within the world of the wealthy. She probably believes she’s done what she needs to do to earn that reward as well. Alex has the supply; she’s more than met the demand of the rich men who employ her as arm candy. We may insist that makes Alex a superficial person, but Alex might respond that makes her no different than all the other millionaires who own homes on Long Island and flaunt their wealth at parties up and down the beach all summer. The only difference is the rich have the money and the power to decide who is allowed to stay in their playground. Alex has played their game as well as they do. She’s done exactly what they want. She’s earned the invitation but can’t control the duration of her stay. She is only there as a guest.
That scratch on that work of art, then, might be read as an act of defiance and an attempt to recruit Nicholas to her side. Alex already concluded earlier in the novel that Simon’s dutiful assistant Lori actually hates him. (“‘[Simon’s] kind of a child, to be honest,’ Lori said. ‘Totally incapable of being in the real world. Useless. If I wasn’t around, he would probably starve to death.’”) Aren’t Alex, Nicholas, and Lori together in the same boat, each serving a hapless master who needs their talents, who doesn’t fully appreciate their work, and who could casually toss them aside and replace them with another flunky whom they could abuse, neglect, and look down upon? Alex constantly spots class markers throughout the novel: The rope separating members from non-members at the club, the lack of hotel rooms and the glut of empty houses in the Hamptons. Might there be a small revolution stirring in Alex? Could her determination to stay on Long Island—to return to Simon’s house on Labor Day like a guided missile—actually be an attempt to show-up or humiliate Simon, to insist she ought to be treated as more than a guest?
The problem for Alex is that she is not only a guest but “the ghost she had always imagined herself to be.” She may be conscious of class and sense there is something unjust in the way wealth is used to subjugate workers. But Alex is so alienated from herself that she can’t think beyond the capitalist paradigm urging her to become whatever others demand of her. Alex can become whatever the market wants her to be, but it’s never clear what Alex wants to be. Part of that is the result of a personality defect or a shortcoming in her moral education. Cline seems to suggest, however, it’s also the byproduct of the superficiality of late-stage capitalism, which has robbed many of those who live within it of a sense of self and the moral imagination needed to resist it. She is only able to see the world through the prism of capitalism. The main question lingering over the novel is if Alex will make it back to Simon’s house for Labor Day. But what will she do once she gets there? Will she subvert the party somehow? Or will she retake her place on Simon’s arm?
It takes a lot of guts to write a serious American novel about self-invention and set it on the shores of Long Island, but that’s what Emma Cline has done with The Guest. Unlike Jay Gatsby, however, Cline’s Alex is neither obsessed with restoring the past nor striving for the future. She is instead a free spirit living moment by moment in a nation that not only celebrates that sort of character but increasingly demands it of its citizens. There is a subversive appeal to the idea that we can become whoever we need to be and wield that to our advantage. The cost, however, is that we become something like guests not only in our country but in our own souls.
Signals and Noise
From Mediaite: “Trump Shares Ominous Clip of Him Threatening Revenge”
Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times report on Don Trump’s plans to expand and centralize the powers of the federal government in the Oval Office if he is re-elected president. The plans include bringing independent agencies under direct control of the president, restoring the power to impound funds, purging national defense and law enforcement agencies of employees they consider disloyal, and stripping federal workers of their job protection.
“Think of President Xi: central casting, brilliant guy. When I say he’s brilliant, everyone says, ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ He runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist: smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There is nobody in Hollywood like this guy.”—Don Trump, during a FOX News town hall.
Trump’s plan to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours is apparently to tell Ukraine to stop or else he won’t give them anymore support and to tell Russia to stop or he’ll give Ukraine more weapons.
Trump’s lawyers are working hard to delay his trials until after the 2024 election. TRANSLATION: A major issue—perhaps the major issue—of the 2024 presidential election will be whether Trump should stand trial for his alleged crimes. UPDATE: Judge Aileen Cannon has set a May 2024 trial date for the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. If that date holds, that trial will begin after most primaries have been held but before the national GOP convention.
Over half of the money raised by Trump last quarter has gone to footing his legal bills, hamstringing his campaign operation.
Remember National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, who released classified documents concerning Ukraine on the Internet? As he awaits trial, he wants the judge to treat him the same way as Trump and release him from detention.
Another thing Trump is hording at Mar-a-Lago: Israeli antiquities sent to the U.S. for an exhibit in 2019 that ended up stranded here during the pandemic. Israel would like them back. UPDATE: He has now returned them.
Jake Lahut of The Daily Beast reports the Trump campaign is quietly preparing to throw the 2024 GOP National Convention into chaos if he does not win the nomination or if another candidate tries to take the nomination from him.
A campaign strategist convicted of bribery but pardoned by Trump has been hired by Trump to work on his presidential campaign.
Michigan’s Attorney General has charged 16 Republicans who falsely claimed to be electoral college electors with forgery and other felonies. Meanwhile, the Georgia GOP is spending a ton of money to defend “alternate” electors connected to the party.
A former State Department official appointed to the position by Don Trump has been convicted of eight felony accounts (including assaulting a police officer) stemming from his participation in the Capitol riot.
“Bullhorn Lady,” who directed rioters on 1/6 with the aforementioned amplifier, was found guilty on nine different federal charges based on her participation in the aforementioned insurrection.
For what it’s worth, Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump are friends again.
Shelby Talcott of Semafor wonders if Ron DeSantis’s campaign is in a death spiral. NBC News notes his campaign is burning through money.
A PAC affiliated with Ron DeSantis released a television ad featuring an AI-generated voice that sounds exactly like Donald Trump.
A Florida state guard set-up by Ron DeSantis to serve as a civilian disaster relief force has instead turned into an armed, combat-prepped militia under DeSantis’s command, according to military veterans who have quit the organization.
Sharon LaFraniere, Patricia Mazzei and Albert Sun of the New York Times provide a reminder of how dangerous a president Ron DeSantis would be: Even though Florida was an early leader in COVID vaccine uptake, DeSantis soon began de-emphasizing the need to get a vaccine while moving to quickly re-open his state. Once the Delta wave hit, Floridians died at a higher rate than the residents of nearly any other state.
David Corn of Mother Jones reports the No Labels organization, despite claiming it is not a political party, is creating state party chapters. By not declaring itself a political party, it does not need to disclose its donors. But records show its organizers have roots in the Republican Party.
A band of centrist Republican House members are withholding support for a GOP tax bill unless the bill restores the state and local tax deduction Trump’s tax cut bill eliminated.
Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana has had it with House Republican’s refusal to deal seriously with budget issues and is threatening to oppose procedural votes until they get their act together, posting on Twitter, “Today, I sent a letter to Speaker McCarthy expressing my discontent with the lack of fiscal leadership – 70% of spending isn’t authorized & we are writing letters & books we can wipe our ass with. I won’t support any rule votes until we start governing.”
Ryan Lizza has a wild scoop at Politico: After Trump got mad at Speaker Kevin McCarthy for suggesting Republicans could find a better nominee for president than Trump, McCarthy reportedly promised Trump on the spot that the House would vote to expunge his impeachments before the August recess.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has a plan for dealing with climate change: Plant one trillion trees. Planting trees is a good idea, but planting one trillion trees would a.) require every person on the planet to personally plant 125 trees, and b.) land space equivalent to the continental United States. If 1% of the global population was devoted to the task of planting trees, each of those workers would have to plant 10 billion trees each. At least Republicans are (kind of) finally acknowledging global warming as a problem. It’s too bad they’re still not serious about solutions.
Matt and Ginger Gaetz + the Barbie movie = Gross.
When Tommy Tuberville ran for Senate in Alabama in 2020, he promised to “donate every dime” from his salary to “the veterans of the state of Alabama.” Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post found no evidence Tuberville has given anything to such a cause.
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy rejected calls to cancel Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr.’s testimony before the House Judicial Committee after Kennedy claimed the COVID-19 virus was engineered not to sicken Jewish people. McCarthy did, however, pile on Democratic Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal by calling her anti-Semitic after she called Israel a “racist state.”
Robert Kennedy Jr.’s sister Kerry Kennedy did rebuke her brother for his remarks.
The House investigation of the DOJ’s handling of cases involving Hunter Biden is one big he said/they said debacle that may boil down to a misunderstanding between DOJ officials. That didn’t stop Marjorie Taylor Greene from showing sexually explicit photos of Hunter Biden during the hearing.
Speaking of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Biden campaign turned one of her speeches into a pro-Biden campaign spot. Dan Pfeiffer explains why it is such an effective ad.
Jackie Llanos of the Florida Phoenix reports African-American history standards in Florida have been changed so that students will now be taught that slavery was beneficial because it taught enslaved people skills. Despite widespread criticism, (said former Rep. Will Hurd, “Slavery wasn’t a jobs program that taught beneficial skills. It was literally dehumanizing and subjugated people as property because they lacked any rights or freedoms,”) Gov. Ron DeSantis has doubled-down in defense of the new curriculum to an all-white crowd (“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.”)
Aallyah Wright of Capital B writes about Patrick Braxton, the Black mayor of Newbern, Alabama (pop. 275, 85% Black) who is suing the town’s previous administration for locking him out of town hall. Braxton alleges he has repeatedly been the target of racist actions that have kept him from assuming his mayoral duties and serving the Black residents of Newbern.
North Carolina Republicans are working overtime to overhaul and potentially cripple the state’s electoral process.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells of The New Yorker profiles Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, whose strategy to grow Michigan’s economy involves implementing social policies that will draw young people to the state.
By Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic: “Is Tennessee a Democracy?”
Benjamin Wermund of the Houston Chronicle reports border security agents in Texas were ordered to push children and babies crossing into the state from Mexico back into the Rio Grande and deny water to thirsty migrants in extreme heat.
Elizabeth Findell of the Wall Street Journal reports Texas has spent billions on border security with little to show for it beyond a bunch of civil rights lawsuits.
Celinda Lake and Mac Heller argue in the Washington Post that demographic changes that have occurred since 2016 will ensure a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024 will look nothing like the 2016 race between Trump and Hillary Clinton. (“Every year, about 4 million Americans turn 18 and gain the right to vote. In the eight years between the 2016 and 2024 elections, that’s 32 million new eligible voters. Also every year, 2½ million older Americans die. So in the same eight years, that’s as many as 20 million fewer older voters. Which means that between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2024 election, the number of Gen Z [born in the late 1990s and early 2010s] voters will have advanced by a net 52 million against older people. That’s about 20 percent of the total 2020 eligible electorate of 258 million Americans.”)
By Charlie Mahtesian and Madi Alexander of Politico: “‘This Is a Really Big Deal’: How College Towns Are Decimating the GOP”
Even though the Supreme Court has ordered Alabama to create a second majority Black congressional district, state Republicans have redrawn the state’s congressional maps so a district that was 30% Black is now 42% Black.
David Leonhardt of the New York Times reports the number of excess weekly deaths in the United States has returned to pre-pandemic levels. Nearly 3/4 of the population has received vaccines and 3/4 of the population has contracted COVID (for a total of about 97% of all adult Americans.) Additionally, treatments like Paxlovid, which significantly reduce the severity of COVID symptoms, became widely available last year. As Dr. Ashish Jha, who had served as President Biden’s chief COVID adviser, explained, so long as people get vaccines and seek treatment for the illness, they will in all likelihood not die of COVID.
Abha Bhattarai of the Washington Post writes Americans still have 10-15% more money in their bank accounts than prior to the pandemic, although signs indicate that money will be spent soon.
For the first time in two years, wages are rising faster than inflation in the U.S.
Crediting “Bidenomics,” Morgan Stanley has revised its GDP growth projections for the first half of the year from 0.5% to 1.9%.
Europeans are facing a new reality: They are becoming poorer.
China’s recovery following its reopening from COVID is stalling, leaving the global economy underpowered.
Russia has pulled out of a deal that allows Ukrainian grain to be transported through the Black Sea. The deal has helped stabilize world grain prices. Russia’s move is likely in retaliation to a Ukrainian attack on a key bridge connecting Russia to Crimea.
Garbage Time: A FIFA Women’s World Cup Preview
(Garbage Time theme song here)
I don’t follow soccer closely enough to write with any authority on it, but when a major event like the FIFA Women’s World Cup is underway, the topic cannot be avoided. So I did what any good cub reporter would do: I talked to a subscriber who knows way more about soccer than me. Here is the edited (and embellished) transcript of my interview, which took place before the United States’ 3-0 victory over Vietnam Friday.
Q. If I remember right, the USWNT has won all the World Cups in my adult lifetime.
A. Dude, you don’t remember right at all. They’ve won the last two World Cups in 2019 and 2015 and were runners-up in 2011.
Q. Oh, that’s right. They lost to Japan in the final that year.
A. Correct. They also won in 1991 and 1999, the year with Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain. Otherwise, they’ve finished no worse than third.
Q. I do know the US is the #1 team in the world. Should I therefore assume the US is favored to win it all this year?
A. No.
Q. What?! How is that possible? I thought we were unstoppable!
A. You thought that because you are an arrogant American. We aren’t favored to win it this year mainly because Team USA waited too long to move on from their older players and stir in new players. Now the team is filled with a bunch of newbies who don’t have big game experience, and those newbies are going to have to play. The team is also going to have to learn how to play together on the fly.
Q. Oh man, I thought our experience was our strength. What happened to our veteran players? Have their skills declined?
A. Some, like Carli Lloyd, have retired. And there has been some decline. For example, Megan Rapinoe, who was the face of the team four years ago, is still good enough to make the roster, but you probably won’t see much of her this year. But there have also been a slew of injuries. Team captain Becky Sauerbrunn is hurt and can’t play. The same is true of Christen Press and Tobin Heath.
Q. Injuries really seem to be taking a toll on the team.
A. That’s true of nearly every contender this year, but the injury bug has hit Team USA hard. And it’s not just the veteran players. Mallory Swanson (née Pugh) is our best scorer, but she messed up her knee last April, so she’s out. Swanson is young (only 25) and experienced (she was in the middle of everything in 2019) so her absence hurts. Team USA could also use Brazilian-born Catarina Macário, who tore her ACL in June 2022. Her recovery is taking way longer than expected. At 23, she’s poised to become Team USA’s next big star, but she’ll have to wait another four years for her World Cup debut. Without Swanson and Macário, the US is down their two best attacking players.
Q. Do we have players who can fill in for Swanson and Macário?
A. We should be OK. Start with twenty-two-year-old Sophia Smith, who will be called upon to fill in for Swanson. There’s also 21-year-old Trinity Rodman.
Q. Dennis Rodman’s daughter, right?
A. Correct. She’s a pretty fierce player, too. Add to that forward Alyssa Thompson, who just graduated from high school a few weeks ago. People are really psyched about her potential. But as you can see, they’re all really young players. This could be a trial by fire for them.
Q. Surely there are some returning players Team USA can rely upon.
A. There’s Alex Morgan. This should be her year. She’s the team’s main striker, the top goal scorer of all-time for the USWNT, and so indispensable that Team USA didn’t even bring a back-up for her. Like Rapinoe, this is her fourth World Cup, but she’s four years younger at 34 and in her prime. Team USA will lean hard on her, but she’s tested and unafraid of the spotlight. There’s also midfielder Rose Lavelle, who’s the center of our attack. She’s a very saucy player and a good passer, but she’s just returning from an injury.
Q. So assess this offense for me. There’s Morgan and a bunch of question marks who seem to have a lot of potential filling in for a lot of missing firepower. Are we going to have trouble scoring goals this year?
A. We might, but that may not be totally on the players. A lot of people are concerned about head coach Vlatko Andonovski, who is not known as a tactician. Goal scoring has become an issue because he just likes to pump in crosses, which is great if you have Abby Wambach on your team, but she retired back in 2015. That leaves the US creatively challenged on offense.
Q. So let’s say we’re not scoring as many goals as we should be. How is our defense looking?
A. Kind of shaky. Twenty-three-year-old Naomi Girma is good, but we don’t have a lot of defensive depth. That problem got worse when Sauerbrunn wentn down. Veteran Julie Ertz was a late add to the roster to put some experience alongside Girma, but Ertz has been out most of the past two years due to injuries and maternity leave and hasn’t played center-back on a regular basis for years. Don’t get me wrong: The US has talented defenders. Most of them just haven’t been tested.
Q. It seems like a very weird dynamic, with injuries forcing the US to find the right blend of talent and experience. You’d ordinarily want to find that blend in a single player, like Morgan. Instead, we’re trying to strike that balance within the lineup. What are Team USA’s chances then? Is this just not their year?
A. Don’t count them out. I’d rank them the third best team in the world right now. If they win their group (which they should) they’ll have a pretty easy bracket going forward and could get all the way to the final before playing a good team.
Q. So who is your favorite to win it all?
A. I’d pick England. They’re dealing with some major injuries, too, but they’re in their prime and focused on the task ahead. After that, I’d say Germany. They’re always in the mix. Spain could have been a contender, but some of their players are boycotting the team because they’re unhappy with their national federation. France was dealing with the same issue, but while most of their players have returned, they’ve lost too many key players to injury.
Q. What about the host countries, Australia and New Zealand? Could they make a run?
A. Home field advantage always helps, but New Zealand won’t get far. Keep an eye on Australia, though, as they feature Sam Kerr, whom many argue is the best player in the world. I could see the Aussies making the semifinals if they get hot and beat France in the quarterfinals, but that’s asking a lot from that team.
Q. Give me a sleeper team to watch.
A. How about a team in the United States’ group? The Netherlands is a young, inexperienced squad that hasn’t done much since losing to the US in the 2019 final. They seem like a squad that could mess up other teams’ plans, though.
UPDATE: The USWNT defeated Vietnam 3-0 in their opening match. The US dominated the game but, despite 28 shots on goal, only managed to put the ball in the net three times. Alex Morgan also missed a penalty shot just before halftime. The star of the game was Sophia Smith, who scored twice and assisted on Lindsey Horan’s goal. The USWNT will play Portugal next. England only managed to pull off a 1-0 victory over Haiti. New Zealand upset Denmark 1-0 in front of their home fans to win their first ever World Cup match. Australia also emerged victorious with a 1-0 victory over Ireland, but did so without Sam Kerr, who injured her calf in training the day before. She’s expected to miss Australia’s first two games at least.