Down 2-0 at halftime for the second time in four days against the best team in the world, the United States women's national team could have folded its October window and gone home. Instead, at Subaru Park in Chester, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday night, two players who had waited a very long time to score for their country again dragged the Americans back into a 2-2 draw with Spain that will mean more than most friendlies ever do.
Ashley Sanchez scored early in the second half in her first USWNT start in nearly two years, and Mallory Swanson — a second-half substitute — equalized in the 86th minute with her first international goal since the gold medal match at the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to the Associated Press. The U.S. had lost the first match of this two-game set 2-0 to Spain in Washington, D.C. on Saturday. Three days later, against the reigning World Cup champions and the world's No. 1-ranked team, the response was the story.
Spain's ruthless half hour
For 45 minutes, this was a clinic, and the Americans were the demonstration. Alexia Putellas, the two-time Ballon d'Or winner making her 150th appearance for Spain, opened the scoring in the 27th minute with a tap-in at the far post — her 43rd international goal, per the AP. Five minutes later, U.S. goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce misplayed a ball up the field, Spain pounced, and Salma Paralluelo drove a shot off the crossbar and in to make it 2-0.
The AP noted it was the first time the United States had conceded two first-half goals in consecutive matches since 2011. That is the scale of what Spain does to teams right now: organized, patient, and utterly without mercy when you hand them the ball. By halftime, a second straight decisive home defeat — and a genuinely uncomfortable conversation about the gap to the top of the women's game — felt close.
The comeback, and the two women who authored it
Head coach Emma Hayes changed the shape at halftime, and the U.S. finally started playing forward. Sanchez pulled a goal back shortly after the break, finding a gap and finishing to the far post. The context makes the moment: Sanchez was making her first start for the United States since Oct. 30, 2024, against Argentina, and she arrived in camp in the form of her life, leading the National Women's Soccer League with 20 goals in 27 games for the North Carolina Courage, according to the AP. One report put her international scoring drought at more than 1,600 days. She ended it when her team needed it most.
Then came the 86th minute. Michelle Cooper collected a long diagonal ball, recovered from a heavy first touch and pulled the ball back, and Swanson — who had come off the bench — volleyed it to herself and fired past Spain goalkeeper Misa Rodriguez, per SuperSport's match report. It was Swanson's first goal since she scored the winner in the Olympic final against Brazil in Paris, an absence shaped by time away from the team that included the birth of her daughter. Her drought, by one account, ran more than 800 days.
Swanson said afterward, in remarks reported by the AP, that staying with it is what this team's crest means. It is a familiar sentiment in this program — the Americans have built a century of comebacks on it, from the 2011 World Cup quarterfinal against Brazil onward — but on Tuesday it was not a slogan. It was two returning players, neither guaranteed anything in the next World Cup cycle, refusing to let a friendly become a rout.
Nearly a winner, and what it all means
The U.S. almost stole it entirely: deep in stoppage time, Rodriguez saved a deflected Lily Yohannes effort to preserve the draw, according to SuperSport. Hayes used the night to keep building depth, too — defender Kate Del Fava and midfielder Pietra Tordin made their senior-team debuts, and reporting around the match noted nine players entered with 11 caps or fewer, with 46 players now used this calendar year, the most in the program's history.
None of that erases the first half, and nobody around the team pretended otherwise. Spain, already qualified for next summer's World Cup in Brazil, remain the standard — the first team in decades, as one match report put it, that can legitimately outplay the Americans at their own game. Hayes said she learned nothing she did not already know. The U.S. is still building toward World Cup qualifying later this year, with a Concacaf quarterfinal against El Salvador next month that can book its place in Brazil, per SuperSport.
But there is a difference between being outclassed and being beaten. On Saturday, in Washington, the U.S. was beaten 2-0. On Tuesday, outclassed for a half and down two goals, it found two goals from two players whose returns are themselves a statement about how much depth this program can still call on. A draw against the world champions, earned that way, is not a panic-button night. It is a reminder — to Spain, and to everyone watching the road to Brazil — that the Americans' floor is resilience, and their ceiling, with Sanchez scoring and Swanson back, is still rising. Follow the rest of the day's action on the Previously sports hub and in our latest news coverage.