Emma Hayes’ USWNT has a huge future after unexpected Olympic gold: Winners and losers from Paris 2024 as Mallory Swanson’s incredible comeback takes center stage amid concerns for Spain,

It was a tournament to remember for the U.S., Marta’s Brazil and bronze medallist Germany – but concerns arose for plenty of others, not least Canada

When the dust settles on the 2024 Olympic women’s football tournament, it will surely go down as one to remember. That will be both for the right reasons, such as the unexpectedness of the United States women’s national team’s quick success under Emma Hayes and the near-fairytale farewell of Brazil icon Marta, and for the wrong reasons, with the drone scandal surrounding Canada Soccer certainly the big story there.

Despite the relentless schedule and gorgeous, but exhausting, sunshine in France, it was a tournament that entertained and threw up plenty of memorable matches, with Australia’s ridiculous 6-5 win over Zambia unlikely to be forgotten quickly and Brazil’s 4-2 victory over Spain surely the biggest shock of them all.

And among it all were the incredible individual stories: the rollercoaster of emotions that Marta went through as she represented her nation at a major tournament for the final time and the heart-warming comeback of Mallory Swanson, who was the USWNT’s match-winner in Paris after enduring injury hell in 2023.

There was, of course, some expectation around Emma Hayes and her United States women’s national team coming into the Olympic Games. This is a four-time world champion and a team that had won four gold medals at this tournament in the past. But there were not many predicting that the U.S. would stand on the top of the podium on Saturday, which is exactly what it did after a 1-0 win over Brazil.

There were a few reasons for that. First, because this team is little over 12 months removed from its worst performance at a Women’s World Cup in history, when it lost in the last 16. Second of all was the experience lost since that doomed campaign Down Under, with the likes of Kelley O’Hara, Julie Ertz, Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe – plus Becky Sauerbrunn – absent this time around, leaving a young group with only a few names that have been there and done it on the biggest stages. But perhaps most significant of all was that Hayes only took over this team in late May and therefore had just nine weeks to work with it before the Games began.

That she managed to guide the group to this incredible success, then, should not be overlooked or underrated just because she is a top coach. It’s a fantastic achievement by the staff and the players and it certainly bodes well for the future.

“I’m so excited about what we can do together,” Hayes said on Saturday, closing out her post-match press conference. “It’s been 75 days baby!” With that, she dropped the microphone on the table and went off to celebrate. Given this start, it’s hard not to think she and her players will be doing plenty of that in the years to come.

Though Canada exited in the quarter-finals, its ‘spygate’ scandal remained the story of tournament and is one that will rumble on for weeks and months to come. That the players were able to persevere and reach the knockout stages despite all the noise on the outside, and despite a six-point deduction in the group-stage, was pretty incredible, especially if what Canada Soccer is saying is indeed found to be true, in that the players themselves were totally unaware of the drones used for spying on opponents and did not participate in any unethical behavior.

What unfolds from here, as the federation begins its investigation, is going to be fascinating and something that everyone across the sport keeps an eye on. With head coach Bev Priestman banned for a year by FIFA, it’s likely that a new appointment will be made, while other members of staff could well follow her out of the exit door. When Canada Soccer’s findings are released, there could be further repercussions and external punishment, too, particularly because there are incidents related to the men’s side as well as the women’s.

Canada came into this Olympic tournament with all eyes on it because it was the reigning Olympic champion, a team set to begin a intriguing title defense. It left it under a cloud, with Canada Soccer, just over a year on from a funding controversy that almost prompted its players to go on strike, once again in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

Saturday’s defeat to the USWNT in the Olympic gold medal match was not the fairytale ending that Marta dreamed of. The iconic forward announced earlier this year that 2024 will see the end of her in a Brazil shirt, making this her final Olympics, her final major tournament and one of the final times we will see her in the colors of her country. She wanted to win gold and clinch a first major international title for the Selecao. “It’s now or never,” she said with a laugh and a big smile before departing for France last month. In the end, Brazil came incredibly close, but left with silver.

It was the fourth runners-up medal in the career of the player widely regarded as the greatest of all time, following Olympic silvers in 2004 and 2008, plus a World Cup final defeat in 2007. Yet, though there were elements to Saturday’s game that made it a disappointment for Marta, it’s hard to feel like the tournament as a whole was an underwhelming farewell.

After all, no one expected Brazil to reach this final. This is a team that suffered a group-stage exit at last summer’s World Cup, is on a new journey with a new coach and has a really young squad. But Marta has been banging the drum for this next generation for a while now. The quality coming through for the Selecao is why she feels comfortable stepping away from the international stage – and the reasons for her confidence were there for all to see at Paris 2024.

Brazil had not been to a major international final for 16 years and Marta signed off by helping them return to that stage and making them dream again. It wasn’t the perfect send-off – but it was the next best thing.

That Tony Gustavsson’s final match in charge of Australia was a desperate defeat to the United States that saw centerback Alanna Kennedy thrown up top, and go within a whisker of scoring a tournament-saving brace, was both fitting and far-from-fitting. It was the former because this was an Olympics characterized by the Matildas’ inability to cope without Sam Kerr, the Chelsea star having ruptured her ACL in January. But it was the latter because this team showed just 12 months ago, in Gustavsson’s finest achievement as head coach, that it was a group capable of adapting and overcoming a setback even as great as that.

That was at the 2023 Women’s World Cup, when the co-host powered its way to the semi-finals despite not getting Kerr back until that last-four clash with England. It was a monumental feat to reach that stage, both because of its impact on the domestic game and because it was something Australia had never achieved before.

Given it backed up the Matildas reaching the last four of the Olympics in Japan three years ago, expectations were high going into Paris 2024 and rightly so, as the progress made under Gustavsson had been impressive. However, under-par individual performances and a lack of conviction from the coach led to a shock group-stage exit that, sadly, doesn’t best represent the success of the Swede’s time in charge Down Under.

There were not many who expected Germany to be a force at this Olympics. After all, it came into the Games under the interim charge of Horst Hrubesch; it lost Lena Oberdorf, one of its most important players, to injury just before the tournament; and it had endured some mixed form as of late, losing 3-0 to Iceland two weeks prior to the Olympics kicking off. Throw in injuries and illnesses suffered by the likes of Alex Popp, Lea Schuller and Sydney Lohman throughout Paris 2024, and it was easy to predict that Germany would falter.

Yet, it emerged from the tournament with a bronze medal. It’s a brilliant achievement by a team that would have had so many excuses to lean on if things had not gone particularly well. It will have be particularly pleasing to watch for Christian Wuck, the man now set to take the reins from Hrubesch.

Twelve months ago, Germany endured its worst-ever major tournament performance when it exited the Women’s World Cup in the group-stage. To respond to that failure by getting on the podium at the Games is a testament to the mentality, quality and heart within this team, laying a fantastic foundation for Wuck to build on ahead of next summer’s European Championships.

Coming into the Games, Barbra Banda was the player to watch for so many people. She entered it on an incredible hot-streak with the Orlando Pride, having scored 12 goals in 12 NWSL games since her switch to one of the best leagues in the world, and was sure to cause the United States, Germany and Australia problems in the group-stage, even if her Zambia side was a huge underdog against that elite trio.

However, though Banda did shine despite the Copper Queens’ early exit, scoring four goals in three games to take her all-time Olympic record to 10 in six, she didn’t come into this tournament wanting individual glory. She wanted to help the team to be successful, something she emphasized over and over again ahead of the trip to France. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

Once again, Zambia’s self-destructive defending proved remarkably costly, despite the efforts of Banda, Racheal Kundananji and more giving it a fighting chance in attack. There was nothing the Orlando star could do about that, as the ridiculous 6-5 defeat, from 5-2 up, against Australia showed.

When the USWNT endured its disastrous World Cup campaign last summer, Mallory Swanson was sat at home, recovering from a truly awful injury experience. Just three months before that tournament began, while she was in the best form of any forward the U.S. could call upon, she was stretchered off with a knee problem that would require two surgeries. “It was literally the worst thing ever,” she said earlier this year.

A year on, Swanson completed an incredible comeback story by being the match-winner in the Olympic final, her alertness, composure and clinical finishing putting the team 1-0 up just before the hour mark in a game that it was lucky not to be losing. As Brazil missed chance after chance after chance, it felt like it was just setting the USWNT up to break the deadlock and see out a win. As feared, those missed opportunities would come back to bite the Selecao – because Swanson was absolutely not going to miss hers.

It capped a wonderful tournament overall for the 26-year-old, who was arguably the team’s best performer in a group stage that saw her score three times in three games. In the semi-final, with the game tied at 0-0 in extra time against Germany, it was Swanson’s delicate pass through to Sophia Smith that decided things. Then, in the finale, it was her turn to take center stage again and deliver the gold that the USWNT so craved.

Spain came into the Games as the overwhelming favorite to win the gold medal. As the world champion, after backing that up with victory in the UEFA Women’s Nations League in February and with its squad full of world-class talent, expectations were high. Unfortunately, those were not met, with La Roja defeated rather comfortably by Brazil in the semi-finals. There were some underwhelming individual displays in that loss, yes, but a lot of the talking points in the aftermath raised questions of the head coach, Montse Tome.

Throughout her 11 months in charge, Spain has been attackable out wide and that was how Colombia, who came close to knocking La Roja out in the quarter-finals, and Brazil got at the defense in the knockout stages, showing that no improvements have been made. There was also the anonymity of Salma Paralluelo, who Tome persisted with in the No.9 role, and the under-use of Alexia Putellas, a two-time Ballon d’Or winner, in the quarter-final and semi-final.

In truth, Tome couldn’t have come out of the Olympics looking like a genius. If Spain had won gold, it would have only lived up to the expectations. If it fell short, there would always be doubts about Tome’s ability in the dugout. Yet, it’s hard not to ignore that several of the flaws in La Roja’s tournament can be traced back to her.

Despite being a stalwart for Chelsea at the very highest level for many years, Ann-Katrin Berger has, perhaps surprisingly, struggled to cement herself as the No.1 goalkeeper for her country. The lack of opportunities she has had are best highlighted by the fact that it took her two years after her first call-up to make her international debut, while she didn’t make a single appearance at the 2022 European Championships or the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

However, ahead of the Olympics, interim manager Horst Hrubesch made a big decision and dropped an out-of-sorts Merle Frohms for Berger, now in-form at NWSL side Gotham, and it was a call that aged beautifully. As Germany won a somewhat unexpected bronze medal, the 33-year-old came up with some huge moments – most notably as the penalty shootout hero against Canada in the quarter-final, before saving Alexia Putellas’ spot-kick in the dying seconds of the bronze medal match to ensure that prize belonged to her and her team.

Will she finally be Germany’s No.1 moving forward?

This really felt like a ‘what could’ve been’ tournament for France. Backed by a great home crowd, drawn in arguably the most favorable group and boasting its best possible squad, with none of the selection controversies that regularly cropped up under previous head coach Corinne Diacre, this was a chance to get at least a medal, if not mount a challenge to stand on top of the podium.

It felt like that was possible throughout the Olympics, too. France genuinely played some of the best soccer on show, with the likes of Kadidiatou Diani, Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Kenza Dali electric at times. The problem was that those spells came in, well, spells, with unnecessary dips allowing opponents back in and that proving to be Les Bleues’ downfall.

That feeling of what could’ve been was only strengthened by the manner in which Herve Renard’s side exited the competition. Sakina Karchaoui was denied from the penalty spot, Griedge Mbock Bathy hit the bar and Katoto missed a glorious opportunity with her head in a quarter-final that France dominated, but ultimately lost to Brazil.

For players like Eugenie Le Sommer, Amandine Henry and Wendie Renard, who have been integral to the rise of French women’s soccer over the past decade and more, another Olympics is unlikely to come – but another home Games is completely and utterly out of the question. There was a real opportunity for these icons of the game to enjoy a monumental summer on home soil. Sadly, though, Les Bleues just didn’t pull it all together.