USWNT legend Alex Morgan blazed many trails in women’s soccer, leaving the sport better than she found it

Athletes, regardless of sport and trophy haul, spend their careers in the pursuit of leaving no stone unturned. They define themselves by their unrelenting desire to improve every aspect of their game, believing even the most marginal of changes can make a noticeable difference. Few have delivered on that promise the way Alex Morgan has, and even fewer have left as large a mark as she did on women’s soccer.

Like most sporting greats, Morgan ends her professional career with a healthy mix of accolades and highlight-reel-worthy moments. She burst onto the scene in 2010 as one of American soccer’s most promising talents and lived up to the billing, now ranking fifth on the U.S. women’s national team’s goalscoring charts with 123 international goals. A handful of those strikes were during some of the most memorable moments in the USWNT’s recent history, including her game-winners against Canada as the team went on to win gold at the 2012 Olympic games and against England en route to the 2019 Women’s World Cup title, the team’s second in a row.

How to watch Alex Morgan’s final game

Date: Sunday, Sept. 8 | Time: 8 p.m. ET
Location: Snapdragon Stadium — San Diego, California
Live stream: Paramount+ and CBS Sports Golazo Network

For many athletes, on-field accomplishments like those are where their endless pursuit of greatness ends but for Morgan, it is just the start of her legacy. The forward’s mission to leave no stone unturned was for the benefit of the collective rather than just herself, using her on-field excellence to force women’s soccer’s power brokers to usher in a stronger, healthier foundation for the game’s exponential growth.

The first time she leveraged her influence publicly was in 2016, eight months after winning the USWNT’s first World Cup in nearly two decades and four months before they were due to defend their Olympic gold medal. She and four other national team colleagues filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, renewing an equal pay dispute with U.S. Soccer that dragged out for another six years. The complaint was upgraded to a lawsuit three months before the 2019 World Cup kicked off with Morgan serving as the lead plaintiff, which she later described as “almost a second full-time job.”

It required players to shoehorn conversations with lawyers into their pre-game preparation as the federation threw curveballs at them but did not stop them from winning a second consecutive World Cup in 2019. The team won Time’s Athlete of the Year honor for the balancing act as well as the court of public opinion as a packed stadium in Lyon chanted “equal pay” after the final. Even as a federal judge struck down key parts of their lawsuit months later, Morgan and her teammates were determined to win their battle and did so with a landmark agreement in 2022, cognizant of the fact that the future of women’s soccer was at stake.

“A Trinity Rodman or a Sophia Smith, they’re going to reap all the benefits we fought so hard for,” Morgan later admitted. “That’s why I did it, so the next generation won’t have to fight for equality and for equal conditions and for what should have been there but wasn’t. I’m really proud of the fight and determination I showed and I really am looking forward to one day being able to share that with (her daughter) Charlie.”

Morgan’s advocacy for others reads just like her list of on-field accomplishments, and much of it happened behind the scenes. She and her teammates used their platforms after the 2019 World Cup win to encourage people to watch the NWSL, at the time still looking for financial security and taking a back seat to international soccer despite serving the necessary function of developing talent. Morgan leveraged her contacts and influence to improve the training situations for the Orlando Pride and Tottenham Hotspur and also met with players from other national teams for a brainstorming session while in Paris for The Best FIFA Football Awards in 2023 as the global push for equal treatment in the women’s game continues. Perhaps most notably, she played a sizable role in a seismic shift in women’s soccer — dismantling a culture of abuse in the NWSL.

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Two months after winning the 2015 World Cup, Morgan was a source of support for then-Portland Thorns teammate Mana Shim as she faced abusive behavior from then-head coach Paul Riley and former club executive Gavin Wilkinson. Later detailed in a groundbreaking report from The Athletic, Morgan helped Shim lodge a complaint only to discover that the NWSL had few human resources for players and a structure that swept abuse under the rug. Six years later, she organized a group of 240 NWSL players demanding a brand-new anti-harassment policy. Within a month, the protocol was in place and marked the first step in a player-first strategy that the NWSL has taken in recent years, including in the new collective bargaining agreement that was ratified last month.

Morgan’s outsized impact is not just impressive in its scope but also the timeline in which it happened. She began her career shortly before WPS, the NWSL’s predecessor, folded in 2011, and broadcast slots, eyeballs and sponsors were hard to come by in women’s soccer. Morgan will hang up her boots in the midst of women’s sports’ undeniable rise, something she observed through the lens of her daughter.

“Charlie came up to me the other day and said that when she grows up, she wants to be a soccer player,” Morgan said in her retirement video. “It just made me immensely proud, not because I wish for her to become a soccer player when she grows up but because a pathway exists that even a four-year-old can see now. We’re changing lives and the impact we have on the next generation is irreversible.”

True to form, she will wield her influence to pay it forward after retirement. Morgan launched TOGETHXR, a media company focused on women’s sports, in 2021 alongside fellow Olympians Sue Bird, Chloe Kim and Simone Manuel and last year created the Alex Morgan Foundation, through which she will advocate for girls and mothers in sports. Both organizations will no doubt assist her as she continues to advance women’s sports, admitting at her final World Cup last year that there is still work to be done despite the great strides women’s soccer has made in recent years.

As her playing career comes to an end, though, one thing is clear — Morgan leaves women’s soccer immeasurably better than she found it, boasting a legacy few will be able to match. Her unflinching ambition, though, ensured that many will benefit from it.