The Future Is Now - WOMEN'S WORLDCUP 2023 PREVIEW

As the U.S. chases an unprecedented THIRD STRAIGHT World Cup title, a new generation of stars will lead the way

- Stephanie Apstein

For as graceful and agile as she is on the pitch, defender Naomi Girma is surprisingly clumsy as she grips the foreign object she's just been handed. She turns it over in her palms and stares at it. "So I just roll it and go?" she asks uncertainly.

Forward Sophia Smith grabs it and tries to help. "You have to scroll it," she says, pointing.

A crowd gathers as Girma continues to struggle. "She was born in the 2000s," someone says.

Finally, U.S. women's national team content manager MC Barrett, who was born in the 1990s-and whose fault it is that they're having this conversation in the first place-steps in.

"You turn it," she explains. "See how you're on 27? Then you hit it, and once you take a picture, you crank it and it drops down."

Girma, 22, laughs. She is the future of the USWNT's defense. But the anticipatory skills that usually help her on the field don't quite seem to translate. "You picked the wrong girlie," she says.

In Barrett's defense, on a team as young as this one, it's hard to find anyone who knows how to use a disposable camera.

THERE HAS BEEN A LOT TO DOCUMENT already as the USWNT charges-and sometimes limps-toward this summer's World Cup, where it hopes to capture its third straight title and fifth overall. This quadrennial has been marked by a changeover in coaching, from Jill Ellis to Vlatko Andonovski; a pandemic; a bronze medal at the rescheduled Tokyo Games, only the second time the squad failed to make the Olympic title game; the retirement of forward Carli Lloyd, a fixture since 2005; a series of firings and resignations as National Women's Soccer League coaches and executives received punishment for either perpetrating or mishandling alleged abusive misconduct; a settlement in the lawsuit players filed against U.S. Soccer demanding equal pay; and a flood of injuries that have left the U.S. short-footed.