In their first season with the former USWNT boss Vlatko Andonovski at their helm, the Kansas City Current is a sure-shot NWSL playoff candidate. The fourth-seeded Current’s sensational run gives us the feeling that Andonovski is hellbent on making the 2023 World Cup horrors fade away. Having played under Andonovski in the NWSL title-winning Kansas City of 2014 and 15, Heather O’Reilly believes the coach is showing a vengeance on making things right after the last World Cup.

During a recent interview, KC legend O’Reilly gave flowers to Vlatko Andonovski for bravely transitioning back to the NWSL after being at the USWNT’s helm. “[He has a] vengeance on like making things right and like clearing his name sort of alluded to that and so he’s definitely on a mission to be back on the winning side because you know he fell short with the US Women’s National Team,” Heather O’Reilly said in her latest interview.

Thereafter, the former US midfielder described one key change in Vlatko Andonovski’s equation with women’s teams and lauded it. “His growth I would definitely say… Like, early days, he didn’t know how to like deal with women. He didn’t know how to deal with leaders. I remember him and Lauren Holiday butted heads a lot. And I think that he has learned to like lean on his leaders and lean on,” O’Reilly added during her recent appearance on an Attacking Third interview.

She also observed that Andonovski developed good equations with a key leadership figure during his Seattle Reign stint with Megan Rapinoe. The former US coach’s interactions with Rapinoe undoubtedly, helped him transition to the NWSL and re-surge with the KC Current. Yet, many have looked at his USWNT stint as an abysmal episode. But not by its current boss, Emma Hayes. And here’s why.

Hayes said she couldn’t have excelled with a young USWNT if it weren’t for Vlatko Andonovski

Trinity Rodman, Mallory Swanson, Sophia Smith, and Naomi Girma, among others, are all superstars today. Of course, the golden win in Paris has put them on a high pedestal. But coach Emma Hayes believes it was Vlatko Andonovski’s sole efforts that brought this brilliant bunch of youngsters together to receive the baton from former legends.

“We look at negative experiences or setbacks as something that shouldn’t happen. I feel the opposite,” Emma Hayes said in a post-Olympic interview, referring to the USWNT’s premature World Cup exit in 2023.

She added, “I feel Vlatko developed a group of players that may or may not have been ready at the World Cup.” Having seized the Olympic gold in style, the youngsters that Andonovski groomed are now ready for any challenge. And that being said, the home-based 2027 World Cup will be the biggest challenge Hayes will be looking at in the US camp.