The Two Players Who Tell the Story of U.S. Women’s Soccer
In 2019, I stood in a bar in Atlanta, Georgia, surrounded by hundreds of other people adorned in red, blue, and white. It was the semifinals of the Women’s World Cup, and the United States was playing against England. The U.S. women were looking to go on to the final, but this would be no easy feat.
The game moved back and forth: The U.S. scored in the first 10 minutes of the match, and the English scored about 10 minutes later. Then, 31 minutes in, the U.S. captain, Alex Morgan, cut across an English defender and headed in the game-winning goal. She celebrated by pretending to sip a cup of tea. The Atlanta bar went wild, perhaps just as much for the trolling celebration as for the goal. A friend of mine, who spends far more of his time watching the NFL and NBA than women’s soccer, turned to me and said, “This is the
