Soccer star Alex Morgan, the longtime cornerstone of the U.S. girls’s nationwide staff, is not going to take part on this summer season’s Olympic Video games in Paris.
The roster announcement Wednesday by U.S. Soccer marks the primary time since 2008 that Morgan has missed an Olympic Video games. It’s more likely to be the tip of her Olympic profession.
Morgan, who will flip 35 in July, appeared on three U.S. Olympic groups, together with the 2012 gold medal squad. She additionally helped lead the U.S. in 4 World Cups, twice profitable that match. In additional than 220 appearances for the U.S. girls’s nationwide staff, Morgan scored 123 targets, the fifth most in staff historical past, together with 53 assists.
“In the present day, I am dissatisfied about not having the chance to characterize our nation on the Olympic stage,” Morgan wrote in a press release on the social media website X. “In lower than a month, I stay up for supporting this staff and cheering them on alongside the remainder of our nation.”
In the present day, I’m dissatisfied about not having the chance to characterize our nation on the Olympic stage. This may all the time be a match that’s near my coronary heart and I take immense delight any time I placed on the crest.
In lower than a month, I stay up for supporting this staff… pic.twitter.com/NAXmQnNN8B
— Alex Morgan (@alexmorgan13) June 26, 2024
In a press convention Wednesday, nationwide staff coach Emma Hayes praised Morgan as “an incredible participant and human” and stated that winnowing the roster to 18 gamers was “not simple.”
“It was a troublesome resolution, after all, particularly contemplating Alex’s historical past and document with this staff. However I felt that I needed to go in one other route and chosen different gamers,” Hayes stated.
The U.S. girls’s nationwide staff is seeking to flip a brand new web page after disappointing leads to worldwide tournaments lately.
Within the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the staff settled for bronze after a disappointing defeat to Canada within the semifinals. Then, final yr, the staff suffered its by far its earliest elimination ever in a World Cup when it misplaced in a penalty shootout to Sweden within the Spherical of 16.
The U.S. is now fifth in FIFA’s worldwide rankings, its lowest spot ever since FIFA started rating girls’s groups greater than 20 years in the past.
The brand new 18-player roster has a median age of 26.8, the fourth-youngest roster the U.S. has ever despatched to the Olympics, in response to U.S. Soccer.
The roster consists of forwards Crystal Dunn, Trinity Rodman, Jaedyn Shaw, Sophia Smith and Mallory Swanson; midfielders Korbin Albert, Sam Coffey, Lindsey Horan, Rose Lavelle and Catarina Macario; defenders Tierna Davidson, Emily Fox, Naomi Girma, Casey Krueger, Jenna Nighswonger and Emily Sonnett; and goaltenders Casey Murphy and Alyssa Naeher. The alternates are Lynn Williams, Croix Bethune, Hal Hershfelt and Jane Campbell.
Earlier than the Olympics, the staff will play two worldwide friendlies subsequent month towards Mexico and Costa Rica. Its Olympic marketing campaign is scheduled to start July 25 with a match towards Zambia.