Tag: profile

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Hope Solo

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Hope Solo

Position: Goalkeeper

Number: 20

National team experience: 170 appearances, this will be her third World Cup, and she has 83 international shutouts.

What to expect from Hope Solo: Hope Solo enters this World Cup as the best goalie in the world. This is an honorary she’s used to having. She’s been considered the best for at least the last seven years. Solo’s greatness is not obvious during most games. Part of the reason for this is that the U.S. team’s defense as a whole is so strong that she often doesn’t have a lot to do. That’s just a small contributing factor though. Largely her greatness is subtle because she understands the game so well. This means she’s virtually always in the right position. She knows how to use geometry to cut down on the available space an offensive player has to shoot at. When a shot is on the way towards her, she reads it and sets herself up to make the save with as much efficiency as possible. There’s very little wasted movement in her saves. She does have supreme physical abilities and reaction times, so she can wait to leap longer than most goalies. Almost uniquely among all the soccer goalies I’ve seen, Solo seems like she focuses not just on making the save but also on where she is going to direct the ball if she can’t catch it. Solo will play every game for the United States and the team should be able to rely on her to make all the saves she should be expected to make and most of them that she shouldn’t.

Video: Watch how relaxed Solo looks during this whole collection of highlights. Only once do I think she looks like she has to scramble and that’s when a shot deflects off a defender.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Hope Solo has had a long and sometimes sordid history as a celebrity. Perhaps her lowest point was this past fall when she was being compared to Ray Rice because of an assault charge she picked up after a physical altercation with her sister and nephew. By no means is Solo free from guilt about this and other infractions but that comparison was unfair. Ta-Nehisi Coates explained the falseness of the comparison better than I ever could in his article in The Atlantic.

Links: Check out Solo’s US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter. She also has a website on which she just wrote a beautiful birthday tribute to teammate Abby Wambach which I strongly recommend. 

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Becky Sauerbrunn

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Becky Sauerbrunn

Position: Defender

Number: 4

National team experience: 81 appearances, this will be her second World Cup, and she has 0 international goals.

What to expect from Becky Sauerbrunn: Becky Sauerbrunn is a prototypical central defender. She’s strong, physical, and totally reliable. If you’re a midfielder, you feel secure knowing that if you make a mistake, Sauerbrunn is right behind you to clean it up. If you’re a goalie, you know you can count on her to keep the front of your net clear. With newcomer Julie Johnston taking over the other central defensive position and doing so with a distinct attacking flair, Sauerbrunn has become the leader of the back line and an even more firmly defensive player. Barring a major injury, we should expect to see Sauerbrunn on the field for every minute of the World Cup. She’s the only player to start in every match the team has played so far this year and she barely ever comes off the field. She’s used to being a workhorse — during her two years in the now defunct WPS professional soccer league, she was the only player in the entire league to play every minute of every game. At her current professional team, the NWSL’s FC Kansas City, she is captain and reigning two-time defensive player of the year.

Video: Like I said, Becky Sauerbrunn is the person you want cleaning up your idiotic mistakes.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Every player who makes a national team remembers their first game with the team. It’s a goal that many of them have been fighting toward for most of their lives. For Becky Sauerbrunn, that sublime memory was cemented and complicated by suffering a broken nose. Can you imagine what that would feel like? Not just the broken nose, but to have made it to the pinnacle of your profession only to break your nose in your first day at work? Crazy.

Links: Read Joe Steigmeyer make the case that Sauerbrunn is the “most important” player on the U.S. Team in the Bleacher Report. Check out Sauerbrunn’s US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Amy Rodriguez

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Amy Rodriguez

Position: Forward

Number: 8

National team experience: 123 appearances, this will be her second World Cup, and she has 29 international goals.

What to expect from Amy Rodriguez: Amy Rodriguez is the forgotten striker. At 28 years of age, she has played her whole career in the shadow of Abby Wambach, seven years older and, more to the point, the most prolific goal scorer in soccer history. She’s also not one of the new generation of strikers who are vying to inherit Wambach’s position: Alex Morgan, 25 years old, Sydney Leroux, 25, and Christen Press, 26. Caught between a rock (clearly Wambach) and three hard-charging pebbles, it’s easy to forget that Rodriguez started all but one of the games in the last World Cup. By the end of this World Cup, if things break right for Rodriguez, she might be much, much easier to remember. If Wambach shows any signs of age, if Morgan can’t get on the field because of her knee injury, and if Leroux or Press show any signs of immaturity, Rodriguez will be there to cooly do her thing. What is her thing? Rodriguez is a powerful player whose strength and low center of gravity help her excel in the crowded, chaotic areas of the field. She is often able to get to passes you think she shouldn’t be able to by throwing a shoulder into a larger defender as she runs by them. Once she has the ball, it’s very hard for the other team to get it back. She scores many of her goals by knocking a shot in from up close or by placing it over or around the goalie from afar. You don’t often see her smash the ball, her outside shots are surprisingly delicate for such a bullish on the ball player. It remains to be seen how much playing time Rodriguez gets but I would expect her to make the most of whatever time she does get.

Video: Pay close attention to Rodriguez’ physical play and technical outside shooting

Non-gendered personal interest item: As befits her low profile, there isn’t much out there about Rodriguez that isn’t about her “surprise pregnancy” or returning to play after giving birth. Way to gendered for this section. Instead, here’s a bonus video of her scoring five goals in a single match. In case you were wondering, that isn’t a record. The record is 13 (!!) scored by Australia’s Archie Thompson.

Links: Check out Rodriguez’ US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Megan Rapinoe

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Megan Rapinoe

Position: Midfielder

Number: 15

National team experience: 102 appearances, this will be her second World Cup, and she has 29 international goals.

What to expect from Megan Rapinoe: Every player on the U.S. national team is a great soccer player. Every player in the World Cup is probably better than anyone you or I have ever played with. But there’s something different about the few players who are truly world class. World class players just look different from everyone else. They have at least one skill that virtually no one else can match. Megan Rapinoe is a world playmaker. She has exceptional vision. Vision literally means the ability to see the field, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Rapinoe has exceptional vision in one way or another, but it also means the ability to understand where every player on the field is and to anticipate where they are going to be. This is truly where Rapinoe excels. She seems to know exactly where to put the ball. Her other exceptional skill, quite handily paired with vision, is her technical ability to pass the ball to just the spot she wants. In the flow of play, Rapinoe’s approach to playing midfielder is acquire the ball, survey the field, move the ball to the player in the position most dangerous to the opposing team. Rapinoe takes the majority of the more technical set pieces, including corner kicks. Her skill on the ball allows her to be a formidable goal-scorer, especially on shots from a distance, but it’s not her primary focus. Rapinoe missed the team’s last warm-up game with a thigh injury. How much we see her on the field during this World Cup depends a lot on her health. The more she can play, the better it will be for the U.S. team’s chances.

Video: This goal, the latest scored in World Cup history, gives me chills every time I see it. Its sheer improbability has a lot to do with the skill involved in Rapinoe’s cross.

Non-gendered personal interest item: During the 2012 Olympics, Rapinoe became the first soccer player of any gender to score a goal directly from a corner kick. Oddly enough, this type of goal has been known as an “Olympic goal” since 1924 despite having never been accomplished in the Olympics until 2012.

Links: Read Sam Borden’s fine profile of Rapinoe from a few years back in the New York Times. Check out Rapinoe’s US Soccer page, her website, and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Christie Rampone

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Christie Rampone

Position: Defender

Number: 3

National team experience: 305 appearances, this will be her fifth World Cup, and she has four international goals.

What to expect from Christie Rampone: After almost a decade and a half of being the heart and soul of the U.S. Women’s National Team, Rampone will finally be passing the torch and taking a firm seat on the bench. Even as recently as the start of this year, the smart money was on Rampone starting for the team at her normal central defensive position. Then a back injury in January forced her out of the lineup and gave Julie Johnston a shot. Johnston has played so well that it’s impossible to imagine Rampone fighting her way past her and into the starting lineup in this year’s World Cup. That doesn’t mean Rampone isn’t still important to the team. She is the sole remaining link to the 1999 World Cup Championship team and therefore the only person on the team with the experience of having won the Cup. I can’t write about the internal dynamics of the team, but from what I can tell from listening to interviews and reading about the team, it seems like Rampone’s leadership is much appreciated by the younger players. None of this is intended to suggest that Rampone is an honorary member of the team — she’s not. Now that her back injury has healed, she’s still fully capable of playing 90 minutes of hard-nosed, lightning quick defense. If there were an injury to a defender, fans should feel completely secure in seeing Rampone slotted back onto the defensive line.

Video: Four goals in 305 appearances for the U.S. team basically tells you all you need to know about Rampone’s style. She’s one of the fastest players out there and despite being only 5’6″, she’s a physical, no-nonsense defender.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Rampone has reached the point in her career when most of the personal interest stories written about her are about her age. Juliet Macur wrote the best article in that milieu for the New York Times. In it, she points out the technological novelty of Rampone having been originally invited to play on the national team by fax and uses Rampone as an example of the insidious shift in our culture away from raising children to be multi-sport athletes who play sports primarily for fun.

Links: Check out Rampone’s US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Christen Press

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Christen Press

Position: Midfielder

Number: 23

National team experience: 44 appearances, this will be her first World Cup, and she has 20 international goals.

What to expect from Christen Press: Christen Press should be the breakout star of the World Cup for the U.S. team. Press is one of the most skilled and explosive players in the world. Everywhere she’s played, she’s scored goals in droves. In four years at Stanford, she scored 71 goals. Her senior year, she averaged a goal per game (lots of teams would be happy with that average) and won the coveted Hermann prize as the best college player in the country. Her goal scoring has translated to the professional level. In 2013, she became the first American to ever lead the elite Swedish league, the Damallsvenskan, in goal scoring. Stuck behind a logjam of brilliant strikers on the U.S. National team, including two of her peers, Alex Morgan and Sydney Leroux, Press was slow to get a chance to play at the senior international level. Her performance, when she has had a chance to play, have been consistently good. In her 44 appearances, she’s averaged .78 goals per 90 minutes. That’s impressive. In 2015, coach Jill Ellis has had Press playing primarily from an outside midfield position. This is a change for Press, who had played primarily as a striker before, but she seems to be embracing it. The position fits with her talents well. Watch for Press to get free in the midfield, collect the ball, and then use her speed and ball control to run at the defense. She’ll either find a seam to run through or collapse defenders onto her until she frees a teammate for a pass.

Video: It’s possible Press caught the French defense napping a little but it’s also possible that she’s just better and faster than all of them.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Press is a writer as well as a soccer player. She’s had articles published in the Chicago Daily News and the Player’s Tribune but my favorite was a first person account of her final two games with the Swedish club team Tyresö which she published on her blog. It’s rare for an athlete to write so openly and reflectively about their career as it’s happening. Here are a couple brief excerpts:

As much as the first goal against rattled us, it was nothing compared to the second. In just 10 minutes, we lost our lead and all of our confidence. I looked at the faces of my teammates. We had so much experience on the field, but faces seemed stricken with panic. So many our fittest players began to cramp halfway through that half. It was chaos.

I’ve tried really hard the last few years to be less attached to winning. I would like to fight as hard as I possibly can in each and every game, and win or lose, leave it at that and move forward. I know in my heart that that is the mindset I need to be a successful and happy athlete. But still, I knew that this game had taken a piece of me.

You can read the whole piece here.

Links: For more about Press, read Jeff Carlisle’s interview with her in ESPNW. Check out Press’ website, her US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Heather O'Reilly

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Heather O’Reilly

Position: Midfielder

Number: 9

National team experience: 218 appearances, this will be her third World Cup, and she has 41 international goals.

What to expect from Heather O’Reilly: Goal scoring sometimes seems like a knack more than a skill. Or at least, having the knack for it is at least as important as having the skills. Heather O’Reilly has both. She’s confident with the ball, ready to take on player head to head, beat them with a deceptive dribble and blow by them with speed that even in her 13th year on the U.S. national team is still present. She’s got a good shot but it’s not her primary weapon. She’s the kind of scorer who always seems to be in place to catch a fortuitous bounce or a little pass back from a striker and put it into the net. With the extraordinary logjam of talent up front, O’Reilly has moved backwards to midfield where she sees periodic action as a substitute. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see her get into around half the games during this year’s World Cup, especially when the United States has the lead and her veteran presence will help close out a victory with no mistakes.

Video: When watching this highlight package, try to count the number of times O’Reilly scores just by being where the ball is going to go before it gets there.

Non-gendered personal interest item: In 2002, when O’Reilly was called up to the U.S. team for the first time, she was a 17-year-old high schooler. Unthinkable now, (there is only one college player on the current team) it was an extraordinary experience for O’Reilly. Read Graham Hayes’ profile of O’Reilly in ESPNW for more about her long career on the USWNT. Also, this is a direct quote from O’Reilly’s Wikipedia page: “In January 2013, she gave a speech to the students at South Lawrence East 5th Grade Academy. Afterwards, she proceeded to beat the entire student body in a footrace.” Ha!!

Links: Check out O’Reilly’s website, her US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Alyssa Naeher

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Alyssa Naeher

Position: Goalkeeper

Number: 21

National team experience: 1 appearance and this will be her first World Cup.

What to expect from Alyssa Naeher: Naeher is the least likely player on the entire team to make it into a game. This isn’t a reflection on her, she’s a great goalie, but Hope Solo is a fixture in the net and Ashlyn Harris seems to be coach Jill Ellis’ second choice. Naeher’s path to playing would be a Hope Solo injury followed by a poor Harris performance. Seems unlikely. If called on Naeher could do the job. A tall goalie at 5’9″, Naeher is used to being called on in desperation. She won National Women’s Soccer League goalkeeper of the year in 2014 despite playing for the Boston Breakers, a team with a shaky defense that finished second to last in the league. After one extraordinary victory, she received the Tim Howard meme treatment for her extraordinary saves. Naeher also has experience with success in World Cups — in 2008 she led the U.S. under-20 team to a World Cup championship, playing in all but one of their games.

In case you’re wondering why the team would even bother carrying three goalies, it’s because if something were to happen to two goalies and you didn’t have a third, all the extra midfielders in the world couldn’t save you from losing.

Video: Here’s Naeher saving a penalty kick in what looks like an NWSL game.

Non-gendered personal interest item: 

Links: Read about Naeher in a New England Soccer Journal profile of her by Tim Bresnahan. Check her out on her US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Alex Morgan

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Alex Morgan

Position: Striker

Number: 13

National team experience: 84 appearances, this will be her second World Cup, and she has 51 international goals.

What to expect from Alex Morgan: Morgan is one of the big mysteries of the World Cup. The high point of her international career to date has been 2012 when she scored a whopping 28 goals in 31 games, while adding 28 assists, just to prove she’s a well rounded player. At that point, it seemed as though the torch of great American strikers that started with Mia Hamm and was passed to Abby Wambach would be passed neatly to Alex Morgan. Morgan had everything you’d want from a striker. She’s fast, skilled, and opportunistic. Her goal scoring touch was only matched by her ability to put herself in the right place at the right time. Alas, things have not gone so smoothly since then. She’s been beset by a series of injuries, many to a troublesome left ankle, that have left her frequently unavailable to play and less effective when she does play. When healthy, she’s one of the best strikers in the world. Heading into this World Cup, Morgan is again out of the lineup, this time with a left knee injury that is said to be a bone bruise. She’s missed the last two U.S. games. Because of her injury, it’s not clear what to expect from her in the World Cup. Are they simply being conservative with a minor injury by holding her out? If that’s the case, we should expect a full-strength Morgan to explode onto the World Stage once more. If she’s not at full strength though, she could come onto the field as a sub or not at all. Sydney Leroux is a similar type of player and 100% of her is probably better than 80% of Morgan.

Video: It’s annoyingly difficult to find a compilation of Alex Morgan goals without being interspersed with glamour shots. This one is pretty good.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Sports Pro Media recently named Morgan the 19th most marketable athlete in the world. Admittedly, this does have something to do with how Morgan represents herself to the world (which certainly has something to do with gender) but that’s no different from the next two men on the list, Rory Mcllroy or Cristiano Ronaldo.

Links: Check out Morgan’s website, her US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Carli Lloyd

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Carli Lloyd

Position: Midfielder

Number: 10

National team experience: 194 appearances, this will be her third World Cup, and she has 63 international goals.

What to expect from Carli Lloyd: Carli Lloyd is one of the most powerful soccer players in the world. From her position in the center of the midfield, (although coach Jill Ellis has experimented with her in an outside midfield role), Lloyd works tirelessly on offense and defense. She is noticeably stronger than almost everyone else in the sport. This shows itself in different ways on offense and defense. On offense, you’ll notice that once Lloyd has the ball, it’s almost impossible to get it away from her. On defense, watch her make legal (most of the time) contact with an opponent and notice how they fly away from her, leaving her and the U.S. team with vitally important possession of the ball. Lloyd’s other noticeable super power is her shot, which she unleashes from long distance, often 20-25 yards from the goal. From most players, this type of shot would sarcastically be labeled, “ambitious.” From Lloyd, it’s totally realistic. She can’t score at will from distance, but it’s pretty close. Lloyd doesn’t have the vision, dribbling, or passing abilities of some of her midfield counterparts, but she more than makes up for it with power and determination. Lloyd should play close to every minute of the World Cup this year.

Video: Lloyd scores a lot but to really appreciate her game, you need to see her play away from the ball as well.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Lloyd was Rutgers University’s first four-time All American athlete. Not that my alma mater has a particularly fine athletic tradition, but Paul Robeson did play football and sing there, so back off!

Links: Read the definitive profile of Lloyd from Jeff Kassouf in NBC Sports World. Check out Lloyd’s website, her US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.