Lynn Williams is From the Future

Lynn Williams has had to be patient. Too patient. Despite becoming the National Women’s Soccer League’s all-time leader in goal contributions this season (surpassing Sam Kerr) and turning 30-years-old this May, she’ll be making her first World Cup appearance this summer. Williams’ inclusion hasn’t been the result of a recent elevation of her game – she’s been one of our most productive forwards since 2016 – instead, it was the style and structure of the USWNT that had to catch up to Lynn Williams.

However, through two games, we are all still waiting.

Unfortunately, one of the main things Williams has had to wait, and wade, through is a common but false perception of her game. Williams’ speed is frequently used as a pejorative by those who criticize her, while ignoring, minimizing or erasing the other aspects of her game that make her great.

On a recent episode of her podcast, “Snacks”, Williams reflected on the journey toward finding pride in her game. “I believe I’m good enough, I believe I’m more than just being fast, I think I bring more to the team than just that, but because the outside world has said this to me for so long, at some point I started believing it,” said Williams. “As I’ve gotten older I’m like ‘so what if I’m fast?,’ if you can’t stop it, who cares? I don’t think that that’s all I am but sure if you think I’m just fast I’m doing pretty good for someone who’s just fast.”

The truth of Williams’ game is that she doesn’t excel just because she’s fast, her assist numbers speak to quality decision making, vision and passing technique. Yes, Williams is also fast. Lightning fast. In sports that require running, speed is not a pejorative. Being fast is good. Being blindingly fast is better. Knowing what to do with that speed – the rarefied air in which Williams resides – is best.

What’s made Williams so special, and far ahead of her time, is a seeming inherent knowledge of when and how to use her speed, in attack and defense.

Williams is one of the best two-way attacking players ever. Ever. It’s simply outrageous that her goal and assist production exists in ‘all-time’ tiers, even as she expends time and energy toward consistently working to reclaim the ball up and down either wing. In this modern era of football we refer to this as pressing and counterpressing, it’s vital to the way all modern teams play, and Williams has been doing it forever.

This year, in her first season with Gotham, she currently sits in 4th place for goals scored (7), and fifteenth in tackles plus interceptions, according to FBref. In order to find the next forward on the list you’ll have to scroll down twenty spots (Bethany Balcer).

So far this NWSL regular season, StatsBomb has registered 31 tackles, 17 interceptions, 33 blocked passes and 328(!) pressures from Williams.

But she doesn’t just do wind sprints around the pitch and get in the way. Her timing and angles make her adept at winning possession consistently. The 31 tackles and 17 interceptions are direct changes of possession, and 93 of her pressures have led to a change of possession as well.

That means she’s won possession through a defensive action 141 times in just 14.6 90s played, or 9.7 times per 90 minutes played. In simple terms, Williams is giving her team nearly ten additional possessions every single match.

Williams and her intensely absurd two-way game was a key part of ludicrous Western New York Flash, then North Carolina Courage, attacks that blitzed the NWSL across multiple seasons. Williams won MVP and her first championship in 2016, then back-to-back titles with the Courage starting in 2018, the year they added Crystal Dunn to their attack.

Dunn joined Debinha and Jessica McDonald to a core that possessed the rare combination of footspeed, speed of thought and quality to keep up with Williams – even if just barely. Across this four-year run, Williams helped power her team’s in-possession and out-of-possession attacks to four consecutive league titles and three championship wins, scoring forty-six goals and delivering twenty assists in 81 starts.

Now, finally on the national team, Williams’ futuristic skillset is shared among the USWNT’s newest and most electric stars. In 22-year old Sophia Smith, 21-year-old Trinity Rodman and even 18-year-old Alyssa Thompson, Williams can now share the pitch with like-minded and like-skilled players. Each player has dynamic and varied uses of their speed with the ball and without, and all enjoy hunting down defenders to create transition opportunities. And all spring forward with fury, skill and glee once the ball is won.

This is the attacking unit and style of play Williams has been waiting for, but so far USWNT manager Vlatko Andonovski has refused to let them cook, even after they’ve given him a glimpse of what they could do together.

Williams helped show what the trio could produce when she changed the match versus Wales just twelve minutes after subbing on. Prior to the inclusion of Rodman, then Williams, the USWNT attack plodded along, banging its head against a stubborn and compact Wales defense.

Then, and in trademark fashion, Williams was the catalyst. She gained possession deep in the attacking half and threaded a perfect ball behind the backline to Sophia Smith, who latched onto it and sent it across to Rodman making a parallel run. The goal was sudden, the passing was quick and sharp, and the movement dynamic – exactly the way Lynn Williams likes, and how she’s always played.

The only question that remains is if the promise that lies within Williams, Smith and Rodman as an attacking trio can force Andonovski to sacrifice his pursuit of control to lean into the future. Whether he’s prepared to embrace it or not, the future is here, and has been for a long time.

– André Carlisle