Lily Yohannes, at age 17, is already a USWNT game-changer

Yahoo

21-02-2025

Lily Yohannes burst onto the U.S. women's national team scene last year with a debut goal and an irresistible 16-year-old smile. But what she did Thursday night for the USWNT, and what she does wherever she goes, is far more important and impressive.
Yohannes, now 17, is playmaker. And she made a play Thursday, on the opening night of the SheBelieves Cup, that most U.S. midfielders have never made in their lives.
She picked up her head, and pinged a lovely ball into limited space behind Colombia's defense. Yazmeen Ryan ran onto it, and fizzed it across the six-yard box to Cat Macario — who will rightly nab headlines for her first USWNT goal in nearly three years, the first of a 2-0 U.S. win.
But it was Yohannes who ran the show. It was the 17-year-old's composure that helped the USWNT settle into a choppy, chippy first half. And it's her distribution that fundamentally changes who the USWNT is and what it can be.
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This was Yohannes' first start for the national team, and just her second game since committing to play for the U.S. rather than for the Netherlands. She was a mildly surprising inclusion in the starting 11, given that all three midfielders who started the Olympic final last summer — Lindsey Heaps (née Horan), Sam Coffey and Korbin Albert — were present, fit and available.
Their skill sets, though, are somewhat redundant. Yohannes is different. At 17, she already has a passing range that is unparalleled, and perhaps unprecedented, in the U.S. player pool.
HOUSTON, TEXAS - FEBRUARY 20: Lily Yohannes #11 of USA passes the ball in the first half against Colombia during the 2025 SheBelieves Cup at Shell Energy Stadium on February 20, 2025 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by)
(Jack Gorman via Getty Images)
Her technical ability is no fluke. And that she's the only USWNT player raised abroad is no coincidence. Yohannes and her family moved to the Netherlands when Lily was 10 — and escaped a U.S. youth soccer system that often prizes physical prowess over technique and tactical awareness. Yohannes, instead, joined the famed academy at Ajax Amsterdam as a young teen. And she developed an understanding of the sport that few American players ever gain.
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She progressed rapidly through the Ajax ranks. She was starting Champions League games by age 16. That's when she grabbed the attention of U.S. Soccer. She earned her first USWNT call-up last spring.
And less than a year later, she's a difference-maker.
A game-changer.
A locksmith and a line-breaker.
Yohannes spent the first half of Thursday's game spraying passes side to side, and injecting life into a U.S. attack that, without its Triple Espresso front three, might have otherwise been stagnant. Her diagonals to both wings stretched Colombia. And her lofted through-ball to Ryan for the goal broke the visitors.
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In the second half, Ally Sentnor, another young stud, doubled the U.S. lead. Sentnor is a versatile forward, but it was her one standout skill that all but sealed the win: her swerving, knuckling shots from distance. Sentnor can strike a ball with frightening power and stunning ease. She's done it at youth levels. She's doing it in the NWSL. Now, at 21, she's done it for the USWNT.
Shooting, though, is not a foreign trait. Yohannes' smoothness, and calmness, and vision, and passing ambition are. That's why she's so vital to the USWNT's future — and present.
Yohannes played in a No. 8 role, lower than Heaps (née Horan) but ahead of Coffey, as a deep playmaker with license to get forward. She provided solutions in early phases of possession, checking to the ball and safeguarding it. In latter phases, her progressive passing provided dynamism.
And, crucially, she has grown. She was not physically overmatched Thursday, nor overwhelmed by the pace of the international game. She was solid defensively alongside Coffey. Late into the second half, she was racing back into the USWNT's own penalty area to block shots with a lunging, outstretched right leg. In stoppage time, she was breaking up Colombian counters.
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She is, of course, still only 17. She will not do this every game. Like other teen phenoms, Yohannes will surely have her bumps, her ups and downs, her struggles. Before long, she'll be navigating a move to a big European club, and growing popularity, and adulthood. USWNT head coach Emma Hayes and the program will understandably be hesitant to rush her.
But Yohannes belongs. She belongs in the USWNT starting 11 ahead of Albert. She is already a ceiling-lifter.