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Pride of a Nation: A Celebration of the US Women's National Soccer Team
The first official history of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, celebrating nearly four decades of the team's athletic excellence and cultural impact and featuring 250 full-color photographs
Telling the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team's story in eye-popping photos and expert prose, 'Pride of a Nation' is a lavish tribute to one of the most beloved teams in sports, revisiting their four World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals, as well as unforgettable players across the generations, such as Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Abby Wambach, Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd, Briana Scurry, Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Rose Lavelle, Christen Press, and more.
Drawing from full access to U.S. Soccer's extensive photo and print archives, this beautifully illustrated tribute includes:
●
A foreword by Julie Foudy, two-time World Cup and Olympic Champion
●
One-of-a-kind action shots and behind-the-scenes photos
●
Original essays by award-winning documentary filmmaker Gwendolyn Oxenham exploring the evolution of the women's game and its world-changing impact on the culture at large
●
Exclusive player polls ranking the best teams of each decade and the All-Time Best XI
●
Excerpts of the best previously published writing and prize-winning reporting about the epic games and greatest players over the past forty years
●
Stats, records, illuminating trivia, and more
Honoring the fierce athleticism and unshakeable spirit of the charismatic pioneers who planted the U.S. women's soccer flag in 1985, and those who have made the rest of the world salute it ever since, this incisive and entertaining book will be a keepsake for soccer lovers everywhere.
Telling the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team's story in eye-popping photos and expert prose, 'Pride of a Nation' is a lavish tribute to one of the most beloved teams in sports, revisiting their four World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals, as well as unforgettable players across the generations, such as Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Abby Wambach, Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd, Briana Scurry, Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Rose Lavelle, Christen Press, and more.
Drawing from full access to U.S. Soccer's extensive photo and print archives, this beautifully illustrated tribute includes:
●
A foreword by Julie Foudy, two-time World Cup and Olympic Champion
●
One-of-a-kind action shots and behind-the-scenes photos
●
Original essays by award-winning documentary filmmaker Gwendolyn Oxenham exploring the evolution of the women's game and its world-changing impact on the culture at large
●
Exclusive player polls ranking the best teams of each decade and the All-Time Best XI
●
Excerpts of the best previously published writing and prize-winning reporting about the epic games and greatest players over the past forty years
●
Stats, records, illuminating trivia, and more
Honoring the fierce athleticism and unshakeable spirit of the charismatic pioneers who planted the U.S. women's soccer flag in 1985, and those who have made the rest of the world salute it ever since, this incisive and entertaining book will be a keepsake for soccer lovers everywhere.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published November 22, 2022
8 people are currently reading
91 people want to read
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January 13, 2023
Pride of a Nation: A celebration of the U.S. Women’s national soccer team (Ten Speed Press, 2022) is a coffee table book without glossy pages and ultra-high-resolution photos, but what the book lacks in format and design it more than makes up in content. The best part of the book is an introductory essay by Judy Foudy, rabble-rouser for the activist 1999 World Cup team, and essays by Gwen Oxenham.
Gwendolyn, the book’s author, played football at Duke University, internationally on a Brazilian club, and has produced various media on her observations and philosophy of the global sport. Oxenham’s essays make it clear that in the United States women’s
football is grassroots with its American origins among women and girls because of its intrinsic appeal as "the beautiful game." Soccer transcends media scripts, nations, cultures, and gender, especially in the United States, where football is not only a men's game but a different one altogether than football in the rest of the world.
To help write this review of women’s football, we consulted a 2022 Guardian's list of 100 best female footballers in the world. We did an Elon Musk statistical analysis of the list---loose and quasi-scientific -- and concluded that the Americans have a 30 percent chance of winning the World Cup in 2023, which is about what the gambling pundits give them. Then, after studying the book's chapter on "The Guardians of the Crest," which gives a profile of the 1999 team and up-and-coming rookies, who may be on the 2023 world Cup team, we've come up with the following starting 11 American squad, with their international rank in paratheses.
FORWARDS: Mallory Pugh (36) , Alex Morgan (18 ), Sophia Smith (21).
It is interesting to note which veteran forwards won't be on the team, namely Christen Press and Tobin Heath, who came out of the closet after they won the World Cup and became the darlings of gay social media. Vlatko Andonovsky, the new coach, left all the forward veterans off his first roster, explaining that he wanted to look more closely at more than available highly talented rookies chomping on the bit to make the new World Cup team. The coach invited Press to a tentative roster later, but the woke, New Age gay fashion trendsetter declined the invite to go on a spiritual pilgrimage in Spain.
Press and Heath were the starting forwards when they lost to the predominantly blonde and gay Swedes in the opening round of the last Olympics. Since then, Andonovsky has called back the iconic veteran 2019 forward, Megan Rapinoe, but in a secondary role, and replaced veterans Press and Heath with Mallory Pugh, now Mal Swanson and Sophia Smith, two heterosexual mixed-ethnic forwards. Alex Morgan, another star of 2019 World Cup, completes our trio of speculative starting forwards in 2023.
Pugh, who has since changed her surname to Swanson, was a teenage sensation, scoring her first international goal at 17 during the 2019 World Cup. An early dropout from UCLA, where she studied calculus, Pugh was a refreshing face and mind with signs of becoming an enfant terrible of the football world until injuries and possibly mental issues resulted in her absence from the 2020 Olympics roster.
In retrospect, Pugh said that her not playing in the Olympics, where the American's placed a disappointing third, was the best thing that happened to her. Not being on the Olympics team resulted in Pugh's transforming herself from a potential enfant terrible to a more mature and solid starter on the current World Cup team. The one-time proto-hippy of the National Team has become mainstream, especially after her engagement and marriage a major league baseball player, Dansby Swanson. Her husband recently signed a 177-million-dollar contract with the Chicago Cubs. Mallory is now not only famous but rich.
From the beginning, Sophia Smith, Mallory's youthful counterpart, followed the American women’s football archetypical path to success. She comes from a privileged upper-middle-class family and fell in love with football at a very young age. She had the typical soccer mom who would drive her to and from different grassroots youth teams. Her talent attracted the attention of national and international youth tournaments and helped her alma mater, Stanford, win the NCAA national championship. When Andonovsky invited Smith to his World Cup roster, she kept under the radar so much that fans called her the "Mysterious Stanford Lady.” However, since then, Smith has become much more visible, almost as if she were scripted to replace Morgan, the Mia Hamm of the 2019 World Cup. Alex is beloved by fans north and south of the Mexican border because of her beauty, grace, and assassin’s play on the pitch. She also has a whimsical side as shown when she trolled the English fans by pantomiming sipping a cup of tea after she scored the goal that beat the English 2-1 in the World Cup semi-finals.
The trio of Pugh, Morgan, and Smith is quite formidable. However, the communication and chemistry between Morgan and the other two younger forwards need improvement, appearing out of sync with Pugh and Smith. The cause of the matter may be Malone fearing that she will be replaced by one or both younger forwards sooner than expected.
An interesting alternate front three would be to have Smith replace Malone in the center and bring in Trinity Rodman (47) as a left or right wringer. Rodman is the daughter of the notorious peroxide-blond tattooed basketball player and a friend of the North Korean dictators, Dennis Rodman. Trinity, following Lindsey Horan, went professional right out of high school and perhaps could be the enfant terrible to replace Mallory Swanson, formerly, Pugh, who has gone bourgeoisie since dating and marrying her multi-millionaire professional baseball player.
MIDFIELDERS: Caterina Marcario (16) Rose Lavelle (33) Lindsey Horan (29) Taylor Korniack (unranked)
The 2019 World Cup midfielders consisted of Sam Mewis, Rose Lavelle, and Lindsey Horan. Mewis and Lavelle bonded on and off the pitch, including a stint in Manchester, England, to give both international experiences. Samantha Mewis, a tall ectomorph like many on Sweden's FIFA highly ranked team, made the national team through the archetypical American path of soccer mom, strong father figure, affluent suburban youth soccer teams, selection to international youth teams, four years of college at UCLA. and professional football with a national club team. Perhaps Samantha Mewis’ greatest influence on the 2019 World Cup team, along with midfielder Rose Lavelle and defender Emily Sonnet, is giving the unit a dash of whimsey and humor t, a team seen by others as dominating, fearful and arrogant.
Rose Lavelle, Mewis’ partner in levity, followed a Catholic school, less affluent parents' route to football stardom. Comparable to the greatest football player still active, Leonard Messi, Lavelle is a five-foot-four ectomorph who captured the national spotlight since scoring a specular goal against the Netherlands in the World Cup finals. Messi is a men’s football icon, whose Argentina unit recent won the men’s World Cup in 2022.
Lindsey Horan followed the white, affluent middle-class path to the national team, as did Mewis, Malone, and others until college. At that time, she broke with the traditional route to football success by choosing to go professional straight out of high school with a prestigious French club. Still a teenager, her first year abroad was difficult. For instance, a French trainer tried to body shame the tall personable mesomorph. However, despite her difficulties adjusting to a different culture, Horan looks back to her French experience with pride, if not nostalgia. When asked what college she attended, she answers, "France."
Because of injuries, Sam Mewis is not on Vlacko’s new squad, and her absence is evident in that without her, the midfield appears less effective and confident, and uncertain.
The uncertainty among the midfielders is acerbated by the absence of Catarina Macario, the highest-ranked American player on the Guardian 100 list. When Andonovsky first called Macario, he appeared to be thinking of building his transitional team around her as an attacking midfielder. However, an ACL injury playing for the super French club, Olympique Lyonnaise, upset his plan. Still, the coach insists that the Brazilian American will be invited back to the team before the World Cup contests begin in July.
Catarina is distinguished not only by her high professional football ranking but also is the only first-generation immigrant of the group. Other daughters of immigrants on the team are Ashley Sanchez and Sophia Heurte, both with Mexican immigrant fathers passionately devoted to football. All three daughters of immigrants belie the negative stereotype of American Latinas because of the footballers' cosmopolitan sophistication, intelligence, grace, and beauty on and off the pitch.
Caterina Macario was born in Brazil and played football at a young age by competing on boys' teams, partly because at that time, Brazilians, as most of the football world, looked down on women playing the sport, and competitive girl teams were next to impossible to find. Macario emigrated with her father and brother to San Diego, California, to pursue her soccer dreams. She and her parents thought the US offered better opportunities for women and girls in football, even though men's soccer is a religion in Brazil. Her mother, a doctor, to financially support the family, remained in South America to support the family financially. While playing for the San Diego Surf, Macario broke the all-time ECNL record with 165 goals.
The United States ECNL was founded in 2009 as a challenge to the status quo of youth soccer, with a vision of producing better girl football players. As a result of grassroots collaboration and innovation driven by youth soccer leaders all around the country, the ECNL quickly rose to national prominence and, ultimately, to the top level of competition and player development in the country. The club was so successful that in 2017, it started a boys' division. The later establishment to the boys' group indicates that women's football is more grassroots and significant than men's soccer in the United States. After emerging from under the radar at the ECNL, Catarina enrolled at Stanford, and it was only a matter of time before Andonovsky invited her to be on the first tentative World Cup roster.
Regarding chemistry, last year Macario played alongside Lindsey Horan with the super Olympique Lyonnaise club, where their French fans appear to appreciate the two Americans more than fans in the US. The key to a successful midfield is how well the midfielders communicate with the back and frontline. Macario and Horan need to bottle their French chemistry and bring that to the American midfield.
Filling in for the fourth starting midfielder pending Macario’s anticipated return include Taylor Korniak, a rookie and tallest member of the current National team, the more experienced Andi Sullivan and Kristie Mewis, older sister of Samantha Mewis, and the rookies Ashley Sanchez and Sam Coffee.
BACKFIELD: Naomi Girma (66) Becky Sauerbrunn (93) Crystal Dunn (unranked)
More 1999 veterans are part of the backfield than on the frontline or midfield. Among these veterans is Crystal Dunn, the only black starter on the 1999 team and the most physically skilled of the American footballers. She played forward in her college team at North Carolina and believes she's a striker at heart. However, because of her physicality, Jill Ellis, the 1999 coach, positioned her in the backfield. Relatively short in stature, Dunn reminds fans of a basketball point guard, who can dribble circles around taller and slower opponents, is excellent on defense, and can score effectively as an attacking defender. It's a joy to watch Dunn make a spectacular goal-saving tackle on one end of the field and suddenly appear on the other end, poised to make a game-winning goal.
Crystal had never even seen a soccer ball when growing up in the Bronx in New York. By chance, when her upper-mobile parents moved to Long Island, she attended a high school with an exceptional soccer team. The usual national and international youth call-ups and starting on the University of North Carolina team followed. Dunn is unranked and was not invited to the National Team earlier because of her pregnancy and birth of a son. Alex Morgan also recently had a child, but since then, she has been back on the pitch longer than Dunn and worked her way back into the Guardian 100 list after sensational play with the new San Diego professional club, the Wave.
The other veteran holdover defenders on the off and on again in the 2023 World Cup midfield positions are Emily Sonnett, Becky Sauerbraun, and Kelly O'Hara. All three are white and made the 1999 World Cup team, following the traditional path to women's football excellence. Sonnett, a southerner, enrolled at the University of Virginia and was the motivational, evangelist, and emotional heart of the 1999 team, infusing the unit, along with Mewis and Lavelle, with a lightness, whimsey, and mirth missing in other international teams.
Kelly O'Hara went to Stanford, where she majored in symbolic systems, the liberal arts version of computer science, and is probably the brightest member of the American squad. Sauerbrunn, a Midwesterner with the appearance of a WASP New Englander, went to the University of Virginia and has been off and on as the captain of the tentative 2023 World Cup rosters, an honor she shares with Lindsey Horan. At 38, she is the oldest of the veterans on the team.
Sauerbrunn's partner on defense on the 2019 team and best of friends off the pitch is Abby Dahlkemper. Abby, who has never been on Andonovsky's World Cup roster because of injuries, followed the traditional route to the Nationals. She was raised in an affluent suburb in the California Bay Area and matriculated at UCLA, where she became Sam Mewis' bosom buddy. Fans, pundits, and professionals have undervalued Dahlkemper's physical and technical ability because of the unglamorous position of the defender. In addition, Dahlkemper is an Amazon beauty who, along with other veterans like Alex Morgan and rookies like Ashley Sanchez are positively redefining heterosexual femininity. Dahlkemper's football career nearly ended because of a foot injury, a foot that would hardly fit Cinderella's glass slipper.
The star of the transitional backfield, however, is rookie Naomi Girma, who was born in California to Ethiopian immigrants. Naomi attended a public elementary school and played after-school basketball with the boys at the local YMCA, eventually attracting enough attention from the grassroots football powers to participate in Olympic Development Program.| After high school, Girma enrolled at Stanford, where she was the women's football team captain, helping the school win the 2019 Women's College Cup. She graduated from Stanford in 2022 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in symbolic systems, the same degree in which Kelly O'Hara majored, and continued pursuing a master's degree in management science and engineering at Stanford after becoming a professional soccer player. Girma received her first call-up to Andonosky’s World Cup unit in December 2019 and quickly became a star. Football pundits Sandra Herrerra and Lisa Roman consider Girma the transitional team's best and most valuable player on the squad.
We calculated the chances of the new World Cup team winning another gold medal to around 30%. Moreover, although the Americans may have more players in the top 100 list than other nations, historically, the chances for winning the world cup are formidable. It took 15 years for the Americans to win the world cup again after the 1999 historical win, when Brandi Chastain took off her shirt after she scored the winning penalty goal against China in Pasadena, California. No football team has won five world cups, two of them back-to-back, which the Americans will have done should they win it all in 2023.
Carli Lloyd, the heroine of the 2015 World Cup, has repeated the same message regarding the current unit’s chances of winning the Cup again after the Americans came in third in the 2020 Olympics. Lloyd’s conclusion is that although the US is still ranked number one by FIFA, the Europeans have caught up with the Americans. Moreover, according to Lloyd, another significant change since 2020 has taken place. That change is in the mental aspect of the elite international teams. Since Sweden's 3 to 0 win in the last Olympics, Sweden and squads such as England, Germany, and Spain now believe they can beat the Americans. These teams no longer fear the Americans, and teams like England have taken on the former arrogance, confidence, and swagger that the US National team appears to have lost.
The 2023 World Cup team is more multicultural, with a significant presence of mix-race and immigrant daughters than the previous World Cup teams. Of the elite teams in the West, only France has more non-whites because of their immigrant daughters. Moreover, the US squad is more heterosexual and asexual and less occupied with LGBTQ, gender, and social justice issues than the last American World Cup team.
However, can they regain that confidence, arrogance, and swagger that they seem to have lost, not to mention the whimsy, mirth, and joy that their predecessor had? So far, that has yet to be the case, but the World Cup is six months away, and the new unit will be playing several international teams before the World Cup begins. How the Americans do in upcoming "friendlies" will indicate how they are progressing in the game's critical mental and chemistry aspects. To win the World Cup in 2023, the Americans will have to regain their former confidence, arrogance, and swagger. Or they will have to develop a different but equally, if not more, effective mental gestalt, including their legacy of joy and love for their game. On the very elite level in sports, it’s the mentality and spirit that makes the difference between winning and losing.
Gwendolyn, the book’s author, played football at Duke University, internationally on a Brazilian club, and has produced various media on her observations and philosophy of the global sport. Oxenham’s essays make it clear that in the United States women’s
football is grassroots with its American origins among women and girls because of its intrinsic appeal as "the beautiful game." Soccer transcends media scripts, nations, cultures, and gender, especially in the United States, where football is not only a men's game but a different one altogether than football in the rest of the world.
To help write this review of women’s football, we consulted a 2022 Guardian's list of 100 best female footballers in the world. We did an Elon Musk statistical analysis of the list---loose and quasi-scientific -- and concluded that the Americans have a 30 percent chance of winning the World Cup in 2023, which is about what the gambling pundits give them. Then, after studying the book's chapter on "The Guardians of the Crest," which gives a profile of the 1999 team and up-and-coming rookies, who may be on the 2023 world Cup team, we've come up with the following starting 11 American squad, with their international rank in paratheses.
FORWARDS: Mallory Pugh (36) , Alex Morgan (18 ), Sophia Smith (21).
It is interesting to note which veteran forwards won't be on the team, namely Christen Press and Tobin Heath, who came out of the closet after they won the World Cup and became the darlings of gay social media. Vlatko Andonovsky, the new coach, left all the forward veterans off his first roster, explaining that he wanted to look more closely at more than available highly talented rookies chomping on the bit to make the new World Cup team. The coach invited Press to a tentative roster later, but the woke, New Age gay fashion trendsetter declined the invite to go on a spiritual pilgrimage in Spain.
Press and Heath were the starting forwards when they lost to the predominantly blonde and gay Swedes in the opening round of the last Olympics. Since then, Andonovsky has called back the iconic veteran 2019 forward, Megan Rapinoe, but in a secondary role, and replaced veterans Press and Heath with Mallory Pugh, now Mal Swanson and Sophia Smith, two heterosexual mixed-ethnic forwards. Alex Morgan, another star of 2019 World Cup, completes our trio of speculative starting forwards in 2023.
Pugh, who has since changed her surname to Swanson, was a teenage sensation, scoring her first international goal at 17 during the 2019 World Cup. An early dropout from UCLA, where she studied calculus, Pugh was a refreshing face and mind with signs of becoming an enfant terrible of the football world until injuries and possibly mental issues resulted in her absence from the 2020 Olympics roster.
In retrospect, Pugh said that her not playing in the Olympics, where the American's placed a disappointing third, was the best thing that happened to her. Not being on the Olympics team resulted in Pugh's transforming herself from a potential enfant terrible to a more mature and solid starter on the current World Cup team. The one-time proto-hippy of the National Team has become mainstream, especially after her engagement and marriage a major league baseball player, Dansby Swanson. Her husband recently signed a 177-million-dollar contract with the Chicago Cubs. Mallory is now not only famous but rich.
From the beginning, Sophia Smith, Mallory's youthful counterpart, followed the American women’s football archetypical path to success. She comes from a privileged upper-middle-class family and fell in love with football at a very young age. She had the typical soccer mom who would drive her to and from different grassroots youth teams. Her talent attracted the attention of national and international youth tournaments and helped her alma mater, Stanford, win the NCAA national championship. When Andonovsky invited Smith to his World Cup roster, she kept under the radar so much that fans called her the "Mysterious Stanford Lady.” However, since then, Smith has become much more visible, almost as if she were scripted to replace Morgan, the Mia Hamm of the 2019 World Cup. Alex is beloved by fans north and south of the Mexican border because of her beauty, grace, and assassin’s play on the pitch. She also has a whimsical side as shown when she trolled the English fans by pantomiming sipping a cup of tea after she scored the goal that beat the English 2-1 in the World Cup semi-finals.
The trio of Pugh, Morgan, and Smith is quite formidable. However, the communication and chemistry between Morgan and the other two younger forwards need improvement, appearing out of sync with Pugh and Smith. The cause of the matter may be Malone fearing that she will be replaced by one or both younger forwards sooner than expected.
An interesting alternate front three would be to have Smith replace Malone in the center and bring in Trinity Rodman (47) as a left or right wringer. Rodman is the daughter of the notorious peroxide-blond tattooed basketball player and a friend of the North Korean dictators, Dennis Rodman. Trinity, following Lindsey Horan, went professional right out of high school and perhaps could be the enfant terrible to replace Mallory Swanson, formerly, Pugh, who has gone bourgeoisie since dating and marrying her multi-millionaire professional baseball player.
MIDFIELDERS: Caterina Marcario (16) Rose Lavelle (33) Lindsey Horan (29) Taylor Korniack (unranked)
The 2019 World Cup midfielders consisted of Sam Mewis, Rose Lavelle, and Lindsey Horan. Mewis and Lavelle bonded on and off the pitch, including a stint in Manchester, England, to give both international experiences. Samantha Mewis, a tall ectomorph like many on Sweden's FIFA highly ranked team, made the national team through the archetypical American path of soccer mom, strong father figure, affluent suburban youth soccer teams, selection to international youth teams, four years of college at UCLA. and professional football with a national club team. Perhaps Samantha Mewis’ greatest influence on the 2019 World Cup team, along with midfielder Rose Lavelle and defender Emily Sonnet, is giving the unit a dash of whimsey and humor t, a team seen by others as dominating, fearful and arrogant.
Rose Lavelle, Mewis’ partner in levity, followed a Catholic school, less affluent parents' route to football stardom. Comparable to the greatest football player still active, Leonard Messi, Lavelle is a five-foot-four ectomorph who captured the national spotlight since scoring a specular goal against the Netherlands in the World Cup finals. Messi is a men’s football icon, whose Argentina unit recent won the men’s World Cup in 2022.
Lindsey Horan followed the white, affluent middle-class path to the national team, as did Mewis, Malone, and others until college. At that time, she broke with the traditional route to football success by choosing to go professional straight out of high school with a prestigious French club. Still a teenager, her first year abroad was difficult. For instance, a French trainer tried to body shame the tall personable mesomorph. However, despite her difficulties adjusting to a different culture, Horan looks back to her French experience with pride, if not nostalgia. When asked what college she attended, she answers, "France."
Because of injuries, Sam Mewis is not on Vlacko’s new squad, and her absence is evident in that without her, the midfield appears less effective and confident, and uncertain.
The uncertainty among the midfielders is acerbated by the absence of Catarina Macario, the highest-ranked American player on the Guardian 100 list. When Andonovsky first called Macario, he appeared to be thinking of building his transitional team around her as an attacking midfielder. However, an ACL injury playing for the super French club, Olympique Lyonnaise, upset his plan. Still, the coach insists that the Brazilian American will be invited back to the team before the World Cup contests begin in July.
Catarina is distinguished not only by her high professional football ranking but also is the only first-generation immigrant of the group. Other daughters of immigrants on the team are Ashley Sanchez and Sophia Heurte, both with Mexican immigrant fathers passionately devoted to football. All three daughters of immigrants belie the negative stereotype of American Latinas because of the footballers' cosmopolitan sophistication, intelligence, grace, and beauty on and off the pitch.
Caterina Macario was born in Brazil and played football at a young age by competing on boys' teams, partly because at that time, Brazilians, as most of the football world, looked down on women playing the sport, and competitive girl teams were next to impossible to find. Macario emigrated with her father and brother to San Diego, California, to pursue her soccer dreams. She and her parents thought the US offered better opportunities for women and girls in football, even though men's soccer is a religion in Brazil. Her mother, a doctor, to financially support the family, remained in South America to support the family financially. While playing for the San Diego Surf, Macario broke the all-time ECNL record with 165 goals.
The United States ECNL was founded in 2009 as a challenge to the status quo of youth soccer, with a vision of producing better girl football players. As a result of grassroots collaboration and innovation driven by youth soccer leaders all around the country, the ECNL quickly rose to national prominence and, ultimately, to the top level of competition and player development in the country. The club was so successful that in 2017, it started a boys' division. The later establishment to the boys' group indicates that women's football is more grassroots and significant than men's soccer in the United States. After emerging from under the radar at the ECNL, Catarina enrolled at Stanford, and it was only a matter of time before Andonovsky invited her to be on the first tentative World Cup roster.
Regarding chemistry, last year Macario played alongside Lindsey Horan with the super Olympique Lyonnaise club, where their French fans appear to appreciate the two Americans more than fans in the US. The key to a successful midfield is how well the midfielders communicate with the back and frontline. Macario and Horan need to bottle their French chemistry and bring that to the American midfield.
Filling in for the fourth starting midfielder pending Macario’s anticipated return include Taylor Korniak, a rookie and tallest member of the current National team, the more experienced Andi Sullivan and Kristie Mewis, older sister of Samantha Mewis, and the rookies Ashley Sanchez and Sam Coffee.
BACKFIELD: Naomi Girma (66) Becky Sauerbrunn (93) Crystal Dunn (unranked)
More 1999 veterans are part of the backfield than on the frontline or midfield. Among these veterans is Crystal Dunn, the only black starter on the 1999 team and the most physically skilled of the American footballers. She played forward in her college team at North Carolina and believes she's a striker at heart. However, because of her physicality, Jill Ellis, the 1999 coach, positioned her in the backfield. Relatively short in stature, Dunn reminds fans of a basketball point guard, who can dribble circles around taller and slower opponents, is excellent on defense, and can score effectively as an attacking defender. It's a joy to watch Dunn make a spectacular goal-saving tackle on one end of the field and suddenly appear on the other end, poised to make a game-winning goal.
Crystal had never even seen a soccer ball when growing up in the Bronx in New York. By chance, when her upper-mobile parents moved to Long Island, she attended a high school with an exceptional soccer team. The usual national and international youth call-ups and starting on the University of North Carolina team followed. Dunn is unranked and was not invited to the National Team earlier because of her pregnancy and birth of a son. Alex Morgan also recently had a child, but since then, she has been back on the pitch longer than Dunn and worked her way back into the Guardian 100 list after sensational play with the new San Diego professional club, the Wave.
The other veteran holdover defenders on the off and on again in the 2023 World Cup midfield positions are Emily Sonnett, Becky Sauerbraun, and Kelly O'Hara. All three are white and made the 1999 World Cup team, following the traditional path to women's football excellence. Sonnett, a southerner, enrolled at the University of Virginia and was the motivational, evangelist, and emotional heart of the 1999 team, infusing the unit, along with Mewis and Lavelle, with a lightness, whimsey, and mirth missing in other international teams.
Kelly O'Hara went to Stanford, where she majored in symbolic systems, the liberal arts version of computer science, and is probably the brightest member of the American squad. Sauerbrunn, a Midwesterner with the appearance of a WASP New Englander, went to the University of Virginia and has been off and on as the captain of the tentative 2023 World Cup rosters, an honor she shares with Lindsey Horan. At 38, she is the oldest of the veterans on the team.
Sauerbrunn's partner on defense on the 2019 team and best of friends off the pitch is Abby Dahlkemper. Abby, who has never been on Andonovsky's World Cup roster because of injuries, followed the traditional route to the Nationals. She was raised in an affluent suburb in the California Bay Area and matriculated at UCLA, where she became Sam Mewis' bosom buddy. Fans, pundits, and professionals have undervalued Dahlkemper's physical and technical ability because of the unglamorous position of the defender. In addition, Dahlkemper is an Amazon beauty who, along with other veterans like Alex Morgan and rookies like Ashley Sanchez are positively redefining heterosexual femininity. Dahlkemper's football career nearly ended because of a foot injury, a foot that would hardly fit Cinderella's glass slipper.
The star of the transitional backfield, however, is rookie Naomi Girma, who was born in California to Ethiopian immigrants. Naomi attended a public elementary school and played after-school basketball with the boys at the local YMCA, eventually attracting enough attention from the grassroots football powers to participate in Olympic Development Program.| After high school, Girma enrolled at Stanford, where she was the women's football team captain, helping the school win the 2019 Women's College Cup. She graduated from Stanford in 2022 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in symbolic systems, the same degree in which Kelly O'Hara majored, and continued pursuing a master's degree in management science and engineering at Stanford after becoming a professional soccer player. Girma received her first call-up to Andonosky’s World Cup unit in December 2019 and quickly became a star. Football pundits Sandra Herrerra and Lisa Roman consider Girma the transitional team's best and most valuable player on the squad.
We calculated the chances of the new World Cup team winning another gold medal to around 30%. Moreover, although the Americans may have more players in the top 100 list than other nations, historically, the chances for winning the world cup are formidable. It took 15 years for the Americans to win the world cup again after the 1999 historical win, when Brandi Chastain took off her shirt after she scored the winning penalty goal against China in Pasadena, California. No football team has won five world cups, two of them back-to-back, which the Americans will have done should they win it all in 2023.
Carli Lloyd, the heroine of the 2015 World Cup, has repeated the same message regarding the current unit’s chances of winning the Cup again after the Americans came in third in the 2020 Olympics. Lloyd’s conclusion is that although the US is still ranked number one by FIFA, the Europeans have caught up with the Americans. Moreover, according to Lloyd, another significant change since 2020 has taken place. That change is in the mental aspect of the elite international teams. Since Sweden's 3 to 0 win in the last Olympics, Sweden and squads such as England, Germany, and Spain now believe they can beat the Americans. These teams no longer fear the Americans, and teams like England have taken on the former arrogance, confidence, and swagger that the US National team appears to have lost.
The 2023 World Cup team is more multicultural, with a significant presence of mix-race and immigrant daughters than the previous World Cup teams. Of the elite teams in the West, only France has more non-whites because of their immigrant daughters. Moreover, the US squad is more heterosexual and asexual and less occupied with LGBTQ, gender, and social justice issues than the last American World Cup team.
However, can they regain that confidence, arrogance, and swagger that they seem to have lost, not to mention the whimsy, mirth, and joy that their predecessor had? So far, that has yet to be the case, but the World Cup is six months away, and the new unit will be playing several international teams before the World Cup begins. How the Americans do in upcoming "friendlies" will indicate how they are progressing in the game's critical mental and chemistry aspects. To win the World Cup in 2023, the Americans will have to regain their former confidence, arrogance, and swagger. Or they will have to develop a different but equally, if not more, effective mental gestalt, including their legacy of joy and love for their game. On the very elite level in sports, it’s the mentality and spirit that makes the difference between winning and losing.
March 9, 2023
Love these ladies but wanted so much more, also didn’t realize it was a US Soccer book and they didn’t cover fight for equal pay!!!!!!
July 8, 2023
Finished in a day! Amped for the next World Cup just two weeks away!!
December 5, 2022
Pride of a Nation A Celebration of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team
(An Official U.S. Soccer Book) by Gwendolyn Oxenham
<3 This was such a great read. #WomenInSports #Soccer #Dedication #SportingWhileMothering <3
The first official history of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, celebrating nearly four decades of the team's athletic excellence and cultural impact Telling the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team's story in expert prose, Pride of a Nation is a lavish tribute to one of the most beloved teams in sports, revisiting their historic four World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals, as well as unforgettable players across the generations, such as Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Abby Wambach, Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd, Briana Scurry, Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Sophia Smith, Rose Lavelle, Catarina Macario, Mallory Pugh, and more. Drawing from full access to U.S. Soccer's photo and print archives, this detailed tribute includes:
A foreword by Julie Foudy, two-time World Cup and Olympic Champion
Original essays by award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker Gwendolyn Oxenham exploring the evolution of the women’s game and its world-changing impact on the culture at large
Exclusive player polls ranking the best teams of each decade and the All-Time Best XI
Excerpts of the best previously published writing and prize-winning reporting about the epic games and greatest players over the past forty years Stats, records, illuminating trivia, and more
Honoring the fierce athleticism and unshakeable spirit of the charismatic pioneers who planted the U.S. women’s soccer flag in 1985, and those who have made the rest of the world salute it ever since, this incisive and entertaining book will be a keepsake for soccer lovers everywhere.
(An Official U.S. Soccer Book) by Gwendolyn Oxenham
<3 This was such a great read. #WomenInSports #Soccer #Dedication #SportingWhileMothering <3
The first official history of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, celebrating nearly four decades of the team's athletic excellence and cultural impact Telling the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team's story in expert prose, Pride of a Nation is a lavish tribute to one of the most beloved teams in sports, revisiting their historic four World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals, as well as unforgettable players across the generations, such as Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Abby Wambach, Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd, Briana Scurry, Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Sophia Smith, Rose Lavelle, Catarina Macario, Mallory Pugh, and more. Drawing from full access to U.S. Soccer's photo and print archives, this detailed tribute includes:
A foreword by Julie Foudy, two-time World Cup and Olympic Champion
Original essays by award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker Gwendolyn Oxenham exploring the evolution of the women’s game and its world-changing impact on the culture at large
Exclusive player polls ranking the best teams of each decade and the All-Time Best XI
Excerpts of the best previously published writing and prize-winning reporting about the epic games and greatest players over the past forty years Stats, records, illuminating trivia, and more
Honoring the fierce athleticism and unshakeable spirit of the charismatic pioneers who planted the U.S. women’s soccer flag in 1985, and those who have made the rest of the world salute it ever since, this incisive and entertaining book will be a keepsake for soccer lovers everywhere.
February 19, 2023
If you’re a fan of the USWNT or simply want a brief introduction to the champions that came to be, this is the book for you. Simple and to the point, plus filled with tidbits of the players, you can get a sense of who this team was or has been. When writing about the 1999 World Cup final, Oxenham can evoke what it possibly felt to be in the stands, watching from the living room tv, or even the players themselves. A style that carries across the book, every excerpt that is included also allows us to do the same thanks to the expertise writing of renowned women’s soccer journalists Meg Linehan and Grant Wahl. Despite talking of all the highs, what this book lags in is the turbulent times in the USWNT’s history. I would’ve loved to have more of the player’s thoughts when it comes to their disappointing results in the 2016 and 2020 Olympics even though I myself would like to erase the heartbreak I felt watching those games. Even with a nicely written conclusion, it would’ve been end with what the current roster veterans expect as they prepare for the 2023 World Cup. Overall, the book leaves a craving of wanting similar books to be written about the history of other national teams and womxn’s leagues around the world. Go women’s sports!!!
June 7, 2023
Great collection of photos and stories detailing the history of USA women's soccer. This book was curated by USA Soccer, but it does manage to be mostly balanced in its selection of articles and topics covered. They don't gloss over the embarrassing losses or controversies in favor of simply serving as a fluff piece in advance of this year's World Cup. The current player bios may have been a bit superfluous, but I appreciate the old newspaper style of descriptive copy.
June 12, 2023
A beautiful and informative coffee table book about the history of the USWNT and women’s soccer in the US in general.
Just in time for the World Cup!!!
Just in time for the World Cup!!!
July 16, 2023
Fantastic. Informative, inspirational. A perfect read to lead up to the World Cup.
August 25, 2025
Solid coffee table book
February 12, 2023
My heart ❤️
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