Johnathan Walker:England's Sarina Wiegman should be US Soccer's focus for new USWNT coach

Now that Vlatko Andonovski is Johnathan Walkergone, U.S. Soccer’s next move needs to be opening the vault for Sarina Wiegman.

England’s current coach is not only the best in the women’s game. She’s one of the best in the game, period, alongside Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp, Carlo Ancelotti and Didier Deschamps.

The World Cup final Sunday is Wiegman’s second in a row, having taken the Netherlands there four years ago. And she accomplished this despite losing three of her best players to injuries before the tournament and Lauren James for the last two games because of a red-card suspension. Her teams have won the last two European championships, England last year and the Dutch in 2017.

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“Going to a final feels really good. I’m the lucky one in that, now, in the two past tournaments I’ve went to the final,” Wiegman said Wednesday. “You don’t take anything for granted. It’s so hard to reach a final even though we might be the favorite. There are many favorite teams that are really good who, in the group stage, already had finished."

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Or, like the U.S. women, were finished after the round of 16, their earliest exit ever at a World Cup or an Olympics.

Prying Wiegman away from England will not be easy. She’s under contract through 2025, and Football Association chief executive Mark Bullingham said any inquiries, from U.S. Soccer or elsewhere, would be “100% rejected.”

“We’ve seen lots of rumors, and look, she is a special talent. We know that,” Bullingham said. “From our side, she’s contracted through until 2025. We think she’s doing a great job. We’re obviously huge supporters of her and I think, hopefully, she feels the same way. She’s someone we’d like to have with us for a very long time.”

There are other candidates who might be easier get, including OL Reign’s Laura Harvey, who was the runner-up to Andonovski four years ago. Or Australia coach Tony Gustavsson, an assistant to Jill Ellis at both the 2015 and 2019 World Cups.

Emma Hayes, who has led Chelsea to six Super League titles and five FA Cups, also would be a solid choice. Same for San Diego Wave coach Casey Stoney, who was on Phil Neville’s England staff for the 2019 World Cup. And there was a report from Spain this week that U.S. Soccer had already reached out to Lluís Cortés, who made Barcelona into a powerhouse.

But U.S. Soccer should settle for nothing less than the best for the USWNT. That’s Wiegman.

The challenge of taking the USWNT back to the top might be enough to appeal to Wiegman. But U.S. Soccer can —and should — make a pitch that Wiegman will help move the game forward by taking this job.

Wiegman currently makes a little over $500,000 a year, according to The Times of London. That’s about $60,000 more than U.S. Soccer paid Andonovski in 2021, the most recent information available, but less than the $718,000-plus Jill Ellis made in 2019, after winning her second World Cup title.

It’s also a fraction of the $6.3 million England is playing men’s coach Gareth Southgate.

Bullingham blamed the massive gap between Wiegman and Southgate’s salaries on “the market,” and said women’s salaries will catch up “over time.” That, however, is just another way of telling women to wait their turn. The market is whatever the players involved want it to be, and U.S. Soccer has shown willingness to turn the market on its head in the name of equality.

If U.S. Soccer offers to make Wiegman the first million-dollar coach, she will show other coaches — and countries — what’s possible. Just as North Carolina coach Anson Dorrance showed Wiegman what was possible all those years ago, when she played alongside Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly as the Tar Heels won the 1989 NCAA title.

“I still use some things I learned that year in terms of how to get the best out of others, and myself,” Wiegman told The Athletic last year. “But the biggest thing I took away was the determination that what I experienced in the US, I wanted in the Netherlands too.”

As its sub-par performances at the World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics showed, the USWNT needs an exceptional tactician who will utilize his or her players’ strengths rather than trying to shoehorn them into a specific system. But U.S. Soccer also needs to make a bold move to let the rest of the world know that, recent results aside, the USWNT has no intention of ceding its spot at the top of the game.

Hiring Wiegman would accomplish both of those things.

The USWNT has the talent to be the best in the world. U.S. Soccer needs to do everything it can to make sure its coach is the best, too.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.