Author: Jonathan Tannenwald

There are a few ways to measure who the players of the moment are for the U.S. women’s soccer team.

One is in the box score, as usual: goals, assists, saves, and so on. Another is measured before kickoff, and with a decibel meter.

Most of the time, the winner of that contest is a veteran, and that might happen again when the Americans play Portugal on Thursday at Subaru Park (7 p.m., TNT, Peacock). Sam Coffey is an obvious favorite, as is electric playmaker Rose Lavelle.

But keep an eye — or an ear, in this case — out for two of the U.S. squad’s younger players who are quickly becoming fan favorites. Midfielder Lily Yohannes and winger Alyssa Thompson have all the skills and charisma to be national team mainstays, and their bandwagons are filling up fast.

Yohannes plays club soccer for Europe’s most decorated team, France’s OL Lyonnes (formerly known as Lyon). The 19-year-old from D.C.’s Virginia suburbs joined in July, as OL retooled its squad to seek a record-furthering ninth Champions League title.

She hasn’t needed long to settle in. Last Wednesday, she scored a stunning goal from nearly 45 yards out in her team’s European season opener, a 3-0 win over Austria’s St. Pölten. The play went viral instantly, heightening the anticipation of her first U.S. appearance since June.

“So many world class players and such a high standard, high level every day in training,” Yohannes said. “Every day is super-intentional, and you just have to, like, stay switched on every day. And I think that’s something that’s super good for me and for my development to have.”

She has two American teammates at the club, midfielders Lindsey Heaps — the national team’s longtime captain — and Korbin Shrader. Heaps had already taken Yohannes under her wing in U.S. camps, and has done so more now.

“I think she’s just such a quality player and such a footballer,” Heaps said. “And to have her in Lyon, to now be there and learn from all the players that are there, is such a an incredible experience for her. But I think she just fits in our team so well, as she started out.”

Heaps blazed the trail 11 years ago for American teens who skip college to turn pro in Europe, and Yohannes is one of many who’ve followed her. But even the veteran had to rave about that long-range goal, calling it “absurd when you think about an 18-year-old taking a chance like that.”

From L.A. to London

Thompson joined Chelsea, England’s biggest team, this summer from the NWSL’s Angel City. The Blues have never won the women’s Champions League, and have never been shy about craving it.

So it turned heads when they not only brought Thompson to London, but did so for a $1.3 million transfer fee — not small by women’s soccer standards, but well below expectations for a 20-year-old.

She has also started quickly. At the same hour as Yohannes’ goal, Thompson notched a goal and an assist in Chelsea’s 4-0 rout of France’s Paris FC.

“I really wasn’t thinking about leaving Angel City, and then when I got the offer, like, a week before the transfer window, I felt like immediately that I wanted to go,” Thompson said. “I’ve always wanted to play in Europe, and I felt like this opportunity, I don’t know when it would come again, and Chelsea is such an amazing club, known all over the world.”

She could see a big picture beyond soccer, too.

“I was like, I really want to go and experience a different place — I’ve lived in L.A. my whole life,” she said. “I feel like this should be just so good for me, like, as a player, obviously, but as a person too, just developing things that I’ve never had to think about before.”

There have also been moments of levity. A reporter from The Athletic got the best answer out of Thompson on the day, asking about off-the-field adjustment.

“They have less AC … I really like it cold when I’m sleeping, so that’s annoying sometimes,” Thompson said, joining a long tradition of Americans lamenting England’s lack of air-conditioning. “And I haven’t tried any of the English food. I don’t like beans in general, so I just wouldn’t try it.”

Neither player is new to the national team at this point, or to its devoted fan base. Yohannes debuted in June of last year (and scored that night too) and has played seven games; Thompson has 22 caps, three goals, and three assists, and was on the 2023 World Cup team.

Thompson narrowly missed making last year’s Olympic squad, but that was always likely to be just a short setback. Now she’s in form, and will likely see a lot of playing time in this month’s games.

“Alyssa, she fits in seamlessly to to Chelsea’s game,” Heaps said. “She just got her first goal, and I think that’s something that she’s wanted since she’s set foot there in Chelsea. So, very happy for her.”

A historic day in Chester

Tuesday marked the return of the U.S. women to the area for the first time in 3½ years, and also something never seen around here.

For a few minutes in the late morning, the national team and the Union were practicing in the club’s training complex at the same time, with one squad at each end of the three grass fields along Seaport Drive.

It was the first time the Union shared the space simultaneously with another professional squad, and it likely won’t be the last.

“The appetite for soccer here is incredible,” said longtime Union captain Alejandro Bedoya, who will attend Thursday night’s game with his daughter. “There’s so much talent when you look at the men’s national team, for the women’s national team, for the Union academy, the players that have come through here. … It’s amazing. And what this sportsplex means, it was a great initiative to get this built.”

The closest previous occasion was earlier this summer, when Chelsea borrowed some of the Union’s fields but did most of their work inside Subaru Park. The nearest thing to an overlap was when the English club invited a few Union reserve squad players to come over from their practice to fill out a scrimmage.

Next year, the complex will be a base camp for one of the teams in the World Cup. But it will be mostly reserved for that, with MLS planning to shut down its schedule during the tournament.

A special day in Chester: the @PhilaUnion and @USWNT are training on adjacent fields.

I believe it’s the first time the club and a national team have worked simultaneously in the complex. pic.twitter.com/afD2oGhmjK

— Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) October 21, 2025

In the mind’s eye, October 2010 might still feel recent. But there are a few ways to measure how long it has really been since Alex Morgan scored her first U.S. women’s soccer team goal.

One is that back then, the future superstar was in college at the University of California. She was a senior set to graduate a semester early, but she still wasn’t a pro yet when she took the field at what then was called PPL Park.

The other is that her historic night in Chester had just 2,505 witnesses in the stands.

That was partially because the Phillies had a home playoff game that evening, one that turned out to be Roy Halladay’s no-hitter. But it was also nine months before the moment that sparked a new boom of interest in women’s soccer that has carried into the present: Megan Rapinoe’s legendary cross for Abby Wambach’s goal in the 2011 World Cup quarterfinals.

Before all that — before two World Cup titles, an Olympic gold, two U.S. league titles, a Champions League title in Europe, and so much more — there was this moment.

And before Morgan grew her girl-next-door personality into a hammer that pounded soccer’s old guard, a 21-year-old entered a game as a substitute with her team down, 1-0.

“It was a really tense night before that goal,” Morgan told The Inquirer ahead of her national team retirement ceremony Thursday at the U.S.-Portugal game at Subaru Park (7 p.m., TNT, Peacock). “We had a really long unbeaten streak on home soil, and so coming in in that moment and being called upon, it was like, ‘OK, are you sure you’re calling upon me?’”

Just over 10 minutes after Morgan took the field, Heather Mitts hit a long ball forward from the midfield line. Wambach was first to it, knocked it down, and, two bounces later, Morgan thumped it in the net.

“It was a big sigh of relief,” Morgan said, “and it was a great moment that I’ll always remember.”

She also remembered the small crowd. That was a fairly common sight back then, with the glow of the 1999 era long faded. The U.S.’s 2008 Olympic gold, led by Carli Lloyd, briefly rekindled the flame, but there was no top-level domestic league in this country from 2004 to 2008.

In June 2011, Morgan, Lloyd, and company played their World Cup send-off game at the former Red Bull Arena (now Sports Illustrated Stadium) in North Jersey before a crowd of 5,852. Six weeks later, their world changed forever.

“We come back [after] we lose in the final, and all of a sudden, everyone’s paying attention more,” Morgan said. “We gain momentum, we win an Olympics in 2012, and in that final in 2012, we have 80,000 people watching at Wembley [Stadium] in London. … Everything kind of turned, all in that moment.”

For over a decade, Morgan was the star of stars. But time comes for every athlete, and after the Olympics in 2021, it started to for her. Then-U.S. manager Vlatko Andonovski started to bring in the next generation, and Morgan did not play for the national team from that October until June 2022.

She was recalled for Concacaf’s World Cup and Olympic qualifying tournament, as the national team faced many injuries and she was on a tear in the NWSL. But she insisted on taking nothing for granted.

On the eve of the tournament, she spoke with The Inquirer in an interview that remains memorable to this day.

“I’m here to continue to make a name for myself on this team, get back into the squad definitively, and help this team,” she said at one point.

At another point, she said: “Not being here in the last eight months, I have to bring it back to the basics.”

Why would a player of her talent and pedigree believe that? The answer was obvious. When that’s how the superstar acts, everyone else follows.

And whenever a national team player is seen as not fully bringing it — whether on the women’s or men’s side — those words return.

If Alex Morgan was that way, they should be, too.

As she spoke now, she again summoned the weight of the crest she wore 224 times.

“I never took playing for the national team for granted,” she said. “I knew that one day you could be there, and the next day you won’t, if you don’t continue to make a case for yourself. I think that was really the mentality that the previous generation — Abby, Shannon Boxx, Christie Rampone — set in stone for this team, and maybe it was the previous generation that also instilled that in them.”

Morgan knew she was perceived — and still is — as the golden girl, attractive to marketers for more reasons than just her skills. But people in the soccer world who know her well knew she put in the work.

“For me it was like, you don’t walk into this team and wear this jersey with the assumption that you deserve to be there day in and day out without working for it, sunup to sundown,” she said. “A lot of people think with me it was an easy ride, and I was a real shoo-in on the team for 13, 14, 15 years, and that’s just not the case. I fought to be there every single day.”

And though she has given countless interviews in her career, she had not forgotten that one from 2022 and the circumstances that surrounded it.

“I had injuries, and I was out on maternity leave, and I needed a break after grinding and having my daughter, and this is exactly when we talked,” she said. “[I] was being omitted from the team for a certain amount of months because I needed a little bit of an extra break because I hadn’t stopped since having my daughter.”

When Andonovski expressed his displeasure, Morgan was ready.

“I said, ‘This is how you’re going to get the best out of me, is if I take this break,’” she said. “I’m glad I’d made that decision at the time, but I had to grind to get back into it.”

She was ready for that, too.

“That mentality is not one that I created on my own,” Morgan said. “It’s one that this team had from the very start, from the very first time that I entered into the team: one of not making assumptions, and one of working for everything that we earned, and knowing that we can never take anything for granted. I hope that players now continue to live by that — certainly, certainly I did.”

And so, on cue, to the present generation of players whom Morgan will watch from the stands on Thursday. Some of Morgan’s teammates are still going, surrounded by a fleet of young risers aiming for the 2027 World Cup.

“To be there and to be able to see the players and kind of be in that environment for a little bit is really fun and nostalgic,” Morgan said. “But I think that this team is in a really good place. You want to be in this place where you’re giving players chances a couple of years before you kind of narrow in on that core group when it comes to the World Cup year.”

They likely will be on display at Subaru Park: 18-year-old Lily Yohannes, 19-year-old Claire Hutton, 20-year-olds Olivia Moultrie, Jaedyn Shaw, and Alyssa Thompson — the last two of whom already have major tournament experience.

“There’s a lot of young players that already have incredibly valuable experience, with either the previous World Cup or Olympics,” Morgan said. “There’s also a lot of opportunity to become leaders on this team. … I feel like all these younger players are making names for themselves, and, yeah, I’m really excited to see [them].”

Just as they will be excited to see her, the one who set the bar they all want to reach.

A quiet Saturday morning in Kensington was graced with a bit of soccer stardust.

U.S. Women’s and Gotham FC centerback Tierna Davidson visited the Safe-Hub complex, adjacent to the Scanlon Recreation Center, to help to run a clinic for young girls from across the city.

“It’s such an honor to be asked to do something like this,” she told The Inquirer. “I always love being able to connect with the next generation and inspire, even if it’s not to play soccer. If it is, fantastic, but if it’s even just to be inspired in any other realm of life, that’s something that I strive to do as well.”

Along with a few rounds of drills, Davidson sat down for a Q&A session with the kids. She spoke about her journey in the sport and as a person, including some powerful words about the importance of seeking help when needed along the way.

“I think that’s something that I wish I heard younger, how important it is to ask for help and how it is not something that you should be ashamed of,” she said. “It’s actually something that you should be proud to be able to do, and it requires humility and confidence to do it.”

Those younger days were when she made her senior U.S. Women’s debut while still in college at Stanford. Either of those things would be hard enough on its own.

“For a long time, I thought that I needed to be excellent at everything by myself, and if I had help, then it meant that I wasn’t that good at it,” Davidson said. “And that’s just not how you get good at things. You have to ask people for help, whether it’s an expert in that field, whether you just need kind of some emotional support, whatever it might be. It is the way that you get better at something, it is the way that you get through hard things.”

Now the 27-year-old centerback’s mantle is full of trophies: the 2017 NCAA championship, the 2019 World Cup (where she was the U.S. squad’s youngest player), last year’s Olympics, and this year’s Concacaf women’s Champions Cup.

The girls in attendance Saturday were drawn to Davidson’s presence, no matter how much experience with soccer they’d had.

“To have her come to Philly, and specifically to Kensington and Safe-Hub, is a really powerful message,” Safe-Hub coach and program development director Samantha Swerdloff said. “It shows the girls in this neighborhood that they matter. … So it was great for them to hear from her about what it takes to be successful, and I really appreciated her reflections on [how] she’s more than just a soccer player.”

Davidson praised the players for being “excited and engaged” and said “it warms my heart to see the group of girls that we have here today be such stewards of the next generation.”

Watching the national team’s new era, too

The day was also a reminder of something less positive: Davidson isn’t playing right now because of the second torn ACL of her career. She suffered the injury in late March and is making her way through the long rehab process. It was merely a coincidence that she came to town a few days before the U.S. women’s team’s game against Portugal at Subaru Park on Thursday (7 p.m., TNT, Peacock).

She’s one of the few big names on the injured list for the team’s October games. Fans also won’t get to see centerback Naomi Girma or superstar striker Trinity Rodman. But at least Davidson will be in the stands, joining what’s expected to be a slew of legends attending Alex Morgan’s retirement ceremony.

Manager Emma Hayes’ roster has its share of familiar faces, including longtime captain Lindsey Heaps and Rose Lavelle, Davidson’s Gotham FC teammate. There also are many young players whom fans will want to get to know, and Davidson is an expert on one of them: defender Lilly Reale, another Gotham colleague.

The 22-year-old was one of Gotham’s first signings after the NWSL abolished its college draft, allowing college players to be pursued as free agents. Reale was a four-year starter at UCLA and was last year’s Big Ten defender of the year. After turning pro, she converted from centerback to left back.

Davidson praised Reale for doing “an excellent job adapting” to the new role.

“Doing it at a very high level as a rookie in this league is very difficult to do, with the kinds of forwards that you have to be handling,” she said. “She’s really taken it in stride. And on top of that, aside from being an exceptional player, she’s also a great teammate and a fantastic locker-room personality to have.”

As for Davidson’s recovery timeline, she said she hopes to be back on the field, at least in training, by January. That would allow her to travel with Gotham to that month’s inaugural FIFA Women’s Champions Cup final four in London.

Gotham will play the winner of South America’s Copa Libertadores, Brazil’s Corinthians, in the semifinals. The winner would then likely would play England’s Arsenal for the title, with that side of the bracket still to unfold.

“To be able to potentially play an exceptional team, a Champions League winner from Europe, is something that we’d be really excited about — but, of course, we have to take care of business in that semifinal game,” Davidson said. “I think that we have a lot of fantastic, well-experienced international players on our team, but we also have a good group of players that haven’t been in this sort of situation. And I think it’ll be really, really great for the whole team to experience that level of exposure, and pressure, and quality of game.”

Something Tierna Davidson said today in a Q&A session with the kids, that stuck with me and a lot of people who heard it:

She talked about learning the lesson of why it's a good thing to ask people for help.

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— Jonathan Tannenwald (@jtannenwald.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 3:48 PM