It's unprecedented at this level. It really is; this summer, the U.S. women's national team will go for their third consecutive Women's World Cup title. No team, men's or women's, has ever lifted a World Cup trophy three consecutive times. Doing so feels like it should be impossible.
That's the position the USWNT is in, though. That's the history they can make. When they take the field to compete down under this summer, they do so looking to conclude a cycle stretching back over the past decade, not just the last four years.
This World Cup will be more difficult than ever, though. The all-too-common refrain is that the world is catching up and, based on the field this summer, you could say it already has. The likes of England, Spain, Germany and France headline the contenders, while the U.S. will actually face their 2019 World Cup final opponents, the Netherlands, in the group stage.
The fact is that the field has never been stronger and, because of that, the USWNT's ultimate goal has never been tougher to reach. No USWNT group will ever have faced the gauntlet of opponents that this team will likely take on if they do hope to make that threepeat a reality.
Can the U.S. do it? Of course. This team is still incredibly talented with superstars, young and older, all over the pitch. Will they? Well, we'll find out. It's also a team that has obvious shortcomings that many of those top teams will feel they can exploit.