The US Women’s Soccer team begins its World Cup run tonight with a game against Trinidad & Tobago. The US Women’s Soccer team is everything the men’s team is not. In men’s soccer, the United States is David without the slingshot. In women’s soccer, we are Goliath without the acromegaly. The thing is… we haven’t won the World Cup since the famous 1999 game versus China. You know, the one in California where we won in a shoot out and Brandi Chastain celebrated by tearing her shirt off in triumph? Yeah, that one. Since then we’ve placed third twice and second once. It’s incomprehensible to fans and unacceptable to players. The US Women’s Soccer team is on a mission to win the 2015 World Cup in Canada and it all starts tonight with their first qualifying game against Trinidad & Tobago.
The game tonight will be televised live from Kansas City on Fox Sports 2. I can’t promise it will be an exciting game — according to the official preview, the US is 7-0 in games against Trinidad & Tobago and we’ve hit double digits in three of those seven games — but it will be an important game. For the players on our team, the arduous five games in twelve days schedule of the qualifying games will be more about simultaneously gelling and competing with each other for places on the team and in the starting line up. For fans, it’s a chance to get to know the team a year before the spotlight of the World Cup starts shining in earnest on them.
My favorite player on the team remains Abby Wambach. Wambach has scored more goals in her international career than any other soccer player ever, male or female. This remarkable fact often gets lost in conversation about soccer. Take Landon Donovan, for instance, who recently retired from the Men’s National Team and was widely referred to as the leading American goal scorer in history. As Valerie Alexander points out in her wonderful article on “the issue of establishing women’s achievements as “women’s” but allowing the male position to be the assumed baseline,” “every time [Donovan] sits there, silently allowing that phrase to be rattled off — “all-time leading U.S. goal scorer” — without pointing out that he is the all-time leading men’s goal scorer, it does take away from what Abby Wambach and Mia Hamm have achieved — total world domination.” Wambach is a great, great soccer player. She’s also fun to root for because she breaks through a lot of the conventions of the popular female athlete. Beautiful though she may be, she is not a sports pin-up sensation like fellow national team players Alex Morgan, Syndey Leroux, or even Hope Solo. Although she is happily married to a fellow women’s professional soccer player, her sexual preference is almost never mentioned in discussing her. What people talk about when they talk about Wambach is her ferocity, her unwavering drive, and her unparalleled athletic achievements. Abby Wambach is a bad-ass and I would want my kids, girls AND boys, to play soccer like her if they choose to play.
Wambach is 34 years old now and what seemed inevitable before — that the U.S. would win a World Cup and that she would be the starting striker of the team — is uncertain. Even more uncertain is her life after soccer. Michael Jordan, equally dominant and driven, has struggled to find a balance in his life without basketball. Kate Fagan recently spent some time with Wambach and profiled her in the twilight of her career brilliantly for ESPNW. It’s an inspiring and troubling article. The ode to the great athlete is there but the overarching theme is Wambach’s impending retirement and the fear, held jointly by Wambach and her friends, teammates, and wife about what happens after soccer. It’s a transition that all great professional athletes have to make but I’ve rarely heard it talked about so honestly and revealingly:
“I know that I was put on this planet to be an athlete,” she says. “But what else is there? What is my point in life? This might sound masochistic or narcissistic, I don’t know, but when I’m not playing the game, the validations I feel about life are always through the hardships. I relate more to sadness, in a lot of ways, when I’m not playing. You can imagine how many people tell me how great I am every day. So for me, it’s a balancing act, trying to be and feel like a normal human being. I have to, not exactly dim my light, but alter my expectations, so I can start to be happy in ways that are sustainable for the rest of my life.”
She takes a deep breath, then lets out the air. “I’ve never actually said that out loud.”
Whatever the world has in store for Wambach after retirement, she says “it will be a lot easier… if I go off into retirement with a World Cup title.” I will be rooting for her all the way. The first step on the trip to the World Cup title starts tonight. Be a part of it!