Alyssa Thompson was 10 years old when she and her younger sister, Gisele, stuck photos of themselves onto a poster of the U.S. women’s national team for the 2015 World Cup, imagining themselves on the squad. By the time they huddled at their aunt’s house to watch the ’19 final, Alyssa was old enough to know she was too young to be there. Forward Megan Rapinoe and midfielder Rose Lavelle, two of her heroes, scored second-half goals against the Dutch to seal the Americans’ second straight and fourth overall World Cup title. Alyssa, 14 and just past her eighth-grade graduation, cheered for the team like a fan.
It did not occur to her that the next time the U.S. played the Netherlands at the World Cup, she would be on the roster.
“I felt so young and it felt, like, so far away,” she told reporters in New Zealand this week.
She is still so young. But she is not so far away. Thompson is a member of the next generation of the USWNT, and she is here now.
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This fall, Thompson played for a U-19 boys team, having long since outgrown the competition Los Angeles’s Harvard-Westlake girls team faced in the California Interscholastic Federation. In January, she became the first pick—and the first player to go directly out of high school—in the NWSL draft, landing with the hometown Angel City FC. In April, when star forward Mal Swanson tore her patellar tendon in a friendly against Ireland, Thompson asked her mom to pack her bags—she was on her way home from practice—and flew to meet the national team. In May, she made it to senior prom. In June, she missed graduation because Angel City had a game in Washington, D.C.
“What a turn of events in the last nine months,” U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski said.
And Saturday (Friday ET), when she entered in the 75th minute against Vietnam, at 18 years, 257 days old, she became the second-youngest American to appear in a Women’s World Cup.
“It felt amazing,” she said. “Honestly, I feel like when I was warming up, I was pretty nervous just to play my first World Cup game. But once I was on the sideline, I was, like, kind of overcome with happiness and excitement, just because I was going into my first World Cup. I wasn't feeling any other emotion. So I actually, like, couldn't help but smile. I don't know. I feel like I've never felt that feeling before, but it was really cool and I was really happy.”
Her teammates will have to hope the butterflies are gone, because they will need her to play like a veteran if they are going to capture their third straight World Cup. Vietnam, despite making its World Cup debut, played well and held the U.S. to a 3–0 victory, but the Netherlands will pose a harder test.
“This is going to be an incredibly difficult matchup, very challenging,” said forward Alex Morgan. “We watched the Netherlands the other night, and they have a lot of the same players as when we played them in the World Cup four years ago—a little bit different in formation but still same personnel—and that’s important for team chemistry. So just knowing that, we know that we have to be at our best.” She added, “They’re incredibly organized. They have a very expansive shape in the attack. They don’t give you much space at all to receive and turn or get on the dribble. They’re very quick to close down space. Their midfielders—[Jackie] Groenen, [Daniëlle] van de Donk, [Sherida] Spitse, who maybe is playing in the backline now—are just very aggressive players, and they transition very quickly as well. Their defenders are very physical, very aggressive in pressing what’s in front of them, so I know I’m gonna have a lot of pressure on my back. The list can go on.” She said it would all come down to the U.S.’s chemistry.
And that will be the challenge of the tournament for the Americans. The U.S. roster boasts 14 World Cup rookies, eight of whom made their debut Saturday. But they have been hunkered down together for a month now, trying to learn everything there is to know about one another—that Rapinoe overpacks and Crystal Dunn loves Cardi B, and also when Lindsey Horan is about to deliver a no-look pass.
“I was happy with the way the team played,” Andonovski said after the game against Vietnam. “If you look at this team, it’s the first time that this 11 have been on the field together. They’ve never been on the field together in a game scenario for one minute, and to see some of the connections and some of the combinations that they were able to do was very positive.” He said he was excited to see how they progressed.
Just like Thompson, those relationships will have to grow up fast.
