U.S. women's national team legend Alex Morgan announces retirement

The United States women’s national team and San Diego Wave forward Alex Morgan announced her retirement from professional soccer Thursday.

Morgan will play her last game Sunday when the Wave hosts the North Carolina Courage, allowing the soccer community to thank and celebrate one of the most impactful careers in women’s soccer history.

“At the beginning of 2024, I felt in my heart and soul that this was the last season that I would play soccer,” she said in a video posted to X.

She also revealed that she is pregnant with her second child.

The 35-year-old was not selected for the roster for this summer’s Olympics in Paris. Nonetheless, she leaves the game cemented as one of the greatest ever to wear the red, white and blue.

“I am so incredibly honored to have borrowed the crest for more than 15 years,” the two-time World Cup winner and 2012 Olympic gold medalist said in a statement. “I feel immense pride in where this team is headed, and I will forever be a fan of the USWNT.”

She appeared in 224 matches for the U.S., ranking ninth all-time, and scored 123 goals, placing her fifth all-time.

Her club career was successful, too, winning the UEFA Women’s Champions League with Olympique Lyon in 2017. With the Wave, Morgan won the NWSL Golden Boot in 2022 and the NWSL Shield in 2023.

Morgan is more than one of the sport’s most prolific and championed goal scorers. She’s the icon that women’s soccer needed during adversity. In her retirement announcement, she expressed pride in “giving my all in the relentless push for global investment in women’s sports.”

She was the face of the USWNT when they fought for equal pay. “We tried to fulfill our career obligations and play soccer, but also like — [it was] almost a second full-time job,” she told MSNBC after the team won a $24 million settlement from their gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation in 2022.

Morgan used her platform to highlight the National Women’s Soccer League inequities. In 2021, she shared her teammate’s email to the league office on X, exposing then-commissioner Lisa Baird for ignoring harassment claims. The public scrutiny pressured the league into negotiating its first-ever collective bargaining agreement.

One of Morgan’s last acts as a professional was working with the NWSL Player’s Association this summer to ratify one of the most player-friendly collective bargaining agreements in American sports history.

Former USWNT midfielder Samantha Mewis expressed her gratitude for Morgan’s impact off the pitch. “It was an honor to be teammates with someone who pushed the ceiling higher & pulled us up along with her,” she wrote on X.

Morgan is undoubtedly leaving the sport better than she found it.