The greater goal that influenced how USWNT Olympic roster was built

Suggest to United States women’s national team head coach Jill Ellis that she has more job security than she did going into last summer and she’ll laugh at you.

“If you’re a coach, there is no job security,” she’ll say when she’s done laughing. “That’s why we do it. That’s part of the adrenaline.”

Still, Ellis became the first U.S. women’s national team head coach in 16 years to lift the World Cup last summer, succeeding where some very capable predecessors had fallen short. And she did so having only had a year and change to prepare.

Ending that World Cup drought made her a lock to stay on through the 2019 World Cup, and soon enough, U.S. Soccer announced that she’d signed a new deal that is believed to see her through the tournament in France three summers from now.

Now, on the eve of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where the U.S. will seek to win a fourth gold medal in a row (and fifth overall) and keep alive its streak of reaching all six women’s soccer finals at the Summer Games, she’s already focused on retaining the World Cup.

“We’ve got a great blend of players with experience at the Olympic Games and in major events along with the youthful energy of some players who did not play in the Women’s World Cup last summer,” Ellis said in a statement when the Rio 2016 roster was announced on Tuesday. “As a coach in the Olympic Games, you want to put together a group capable of reaching the top of the podium while also being mindful of getting players prepared for the next World Cup, and I think we’ve done that.”

Ellis understands, seemingly better than anyone, that the women’s game is evolving at breakneck pace, and that teams the Americans had grown accustomed to rolling over are forever getting stronger. That things are only going to get harder. And that the game’s physical and technical evolution requires incessant tinkering and adjusting.

But it isn’t until now that she’s gotten the chance to build the kind of team she envisioned. There wasn’t enough time before last summer’s big tournament in Canada to fashion the sort of attacking, possession-oriented and – above all – modern team out of whole cloth, rethinking entirely what the U.S. had always been, namely fit and physical.

Before the World Cup, there was barely time to get a team that had lost its way back on the tracks and in a position for a title it was still very much expected to claim.

“I wasn’t going to be able to get experience enough for younger players to come in,” Ellis said on a conference call with reporters. “I had a very good handle on the players that were in the group and so I felt very comfortable in terms of: this is how we’re going to play and this is what we need. Preparing for a World Cup, I don’t think I was looking beyond what we had already in.”

Now, however, there is a little time. And she has the credibility and security – no matter what she says – to try out new players and systems and methods. Just 14 players who were on the 23-woman World Cup team remain for the 18-person Olympic squad, an unusual rate of turnover for a U.S. team in which players have frequently locked down positions or roles for a decade or longer.

With the World Cup won, Ellis could train her eye not just on the present but the future as well.

“Certainly, once the World Cup was over, I had to call [U.S. Soccer] president Sunil [Gulati] – obviously, you want to know that you’re on the same page – and said, ‘If we are about winning world championships, we can’t have all our focus be on the Olympics. It has to be on looking at new players to build for beyond.’ And he agreed,” Ellis said.

“We still want to win a gold medal. We still want to be competitive this summer – and that’s still a high, high priority – but I think we can do that and also start to build players for the future.”

So in putting together her Olympic roster, she also began framing the outlines of her next World Cup roster.

“Building for the future was certainly something that came into play in terms of the initial players that I brought into the pool over the last eight months,” Ellis said. “If I was going to bring people in, it was because I thought they would have a shot at the 2019 roster.” That also applied to those returning from the World Cup team, she said.

Ellis views the Olympics not just as a major prize to be won, but also as a very early general rehearsal and learning opportunity for the World Cup. “This is such a massive event, such a great experience for our players, so that we’d go into a World Cup with players who have had a big tournament-type atmosphere,” she said.

Rejuvenation was necessary when an aging team waved off a handful of mainstays like Abby Wambach, Christie Rampone, Lauren Holiday and Shannon Boxx in the year since the World Cup. But the process also offers an opportunity to invigorate a team that has won every major prize in women’s soccer since 2011. Nobody has repeated as Women’s World Cup winners, after all, and Ellis would like to be the first.

“One of the things I’ve really looked in to is why has a repeat never been done? Is it a change in personnel? Is it complacency?” she asked. So in recent camps, she’s had a lot of individual meetings with her players, quizzing their hunger and focus.

As a former college head coach and an under-17, under-20 and under-21 national team manager, it’s natural for Ellis to look to the youth pushing through. And it’s a refreshing approach to a team whose lineups you could once pencil in months ahead of time. She knew there was talent in the pipeline.

“It was just a matter of time before we’d bring those players in,” Ellis said. “I think we’ve got a lot of good balance between players that have been there before and players that are going to bring something to the game.”

And once the American women leave Brazil, ideally with another gold medal in hand, the relentless Ellis should have a foundation to work from in the two years until World Cup qualifying begins, to build and rebuild again.

“After the Olympics,” she said, “you reset again.”

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.