The 4 episode documentary Under Pressure on Netflix takes you behind the scenes of The United States Women’s Soccer Teams (USWNT) build up to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup and their disappointing showing during the tournament. 

Most famous sports documentaries take you through the journey of what it takes to win but this docuseries isn’t that. Instead it ends in the teams devastating early exit of the tournament. 

Coming into the tournament the USWNT won back to back world cups in 2015 and 2019. They were expected to 3-peat by many fans across the country. But instead they cracked under the pressure. 

The series follows players of the USWNT in their journey to make the world cup roster and the tournament itself and the heartbreak that followed. Taking an inside look into five specific players on the roster, the extremely talented forward Lynn Williams, the very well known veteran Alex Morgan, the rookie and teenager Alyssa Thompson, National team newcomer Savannah Demelo, and the previous Gothom FC midfielder Kristie Mewis. Diving in deeper to the story of Lynn Williams and the hard work she put in to finally be seen as an elite player for the USWNT

Two time Emmy award-winning director Rebecca Gitlitz wanted this story and she dreamed of it being a “story of powerful women who willed themselves into a pinnacle of power and competition.”

This story was all she hoped for and more. She wanted to bring attention to the women’s game with this piece, she did just that. 

The 2023 Women’s World Cup will go down in history with nearly two million people attending to watch games throughout the tournament, which surpassed the previous record attendance of 1.35 million. 

The games were held in Australia and New Zealand which made it difficult for American supporters to watch. But this didn’t stop the support felt by the USWNT during this tournament and the docuseries shows how they felt that support and even all the pressure that was felt across the world.

The pressure was too much and they underperformed in the tournament group stages which set them to play a great team in Sweden in the first game of the knockout stages. The US fought hard during the game against Sweden but not a single goal set the teams apart during full time or extra time. This meant penalties. 

This penalty shootout is well known in the soccer world for the millimeter that forced the US team’s earliest exit in tournament history. With the penalty score being 4-4 Lina Hurtig of Sweden stepped up to the spot. The whistle blew and Hurtig took the shot which Alyssa Naehr (US goalkeeper) initially got a hand on and the US thought they were safe but the ball bounced off Naehrs hand and just barely went over the goal line before Naehr got ahold of it. Then the refs checked the goal line technology and VAR and sure enough it was just over the line. The US were out of the tournament. 

The USWNT felt heartbroken at that moment and towards the end of the documentary a few of the players on the team recap the tournament and share how they felt after their World Cup run was over.

I think that this docuseries is a must watch and shares a great perspective on what it is like to be a dynasty team and have that amount of pressure being put on you. It also shows how much women’s sports is growing and how big this tournament truly was.