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world cup 2019
On a drizzly spring evening in
New York City, Alex Morgan fixes her gaze
on the golf ball at her feet, cocks her arms
and then propels them forward with ef-
fortless power. The ball leaps off the tee
and sails toward the netting between the
tee and the Hudson River 200 yd. away.
“This is nice,” Morgan says, exhaling be-
tween swings. “Really nice.”
The driving range is a favorite escape
for Morgan, but she’s spending less and
less time there—even as she needs the re-
lease more than ever. The reigning U.S.
women’s soccer player of the year, Morgan
is the sport’s most marketable American
star since Mia Hamm and the linchpin of
Team USA’s bid to clinch a second con-
secutive World Cup title this summer. She
leads the U.S. into the tournament, which
begins on June 7 in France, facing outsize
expectations both on the field and off.
As the defending champions and top-
ranked team, the Americans are favored
to win. But the competition is historically
tough. When the U.S. hosted the land-
mark 1999 World Cup, which led tens
of thousands of girls to sign up for youth
soccer leagues, only a few countries were
considered contenders. Traditional soc-
cer powers like France, England and Spain
didn’t even qualify. Now, thanks in part to
increased investment from soccer govern-
ing bodies and their corporate backers,
many more have a real shot in the tourna-
ment, which now has 24 teams, up from
16 two decades ago.
“This is the first time I have ever been
able to name potential winners on more
than one hand,” says former U.S. player
Julie Foudy, an ESPN analyst, who sees
the U.S., France, Germany, Austra-
lia, Japan, England and Sweden as title
threats. “Absolutely, this is the most com-
petitive World Cup I have seen.”
Interest should be particularly high
66 Time June 3–10, 2019
in the U.S., where the women’s team not
only outperforms the men’s team on the
field—the men failed to even qualify for
last year’s World Cup—but has outdrawn
it too. Four years ago, some 25 million peo-
ple watched the women’s team beat Japan
in the World Cup final—a record U.S. au-
dience for any soccer game.
But the team’s success highlights glar-
ing inequities. Despite the popularity of
the women’s team, the men are positioned
to make substantially more money. And
so on March 8, International Women’s
Day, the U.S. players took the unprec-
edented step of filing a federal gender-
discrimination lawsuit against the United
States Soccer Federation, the national
governing body for the sport. Morgan’s
name was listed first in the suit, which
accuses U.S. Soccer of paying “only lip
service to gender equality.” (The feder-
ation, in a legal filing responding to the
complaint, denied unlawful conduct, at-
tributing any alleged pay discrepancies to
“differences in the aggregate revenue gen-
erated by the different teams and/or any
other factor other than sex.”)
“Eventually, you just have to take a
stand,” Morgan says while riding in an
Uber from her New York hotel to the
driving range. “How come we’ve had to
fight this whole time, year after year?”
Her stand has inspired other women’s
teams around the world to push for equal
treatment and has transformed the U.S.
women into a cause larger than soccer. At
a Los Angeles exhibition game in April,
the actors Jessica Chastain, Eva Longoria,
Jennifer Garner, Uzo Aduba and Natalie
Portman attended with T-shirts that read
Time’s Up pay Up. At a time of almost par-
alyzing political division, the World Cup
has the potential to be a welcome national
distraction, a respite from presidential
politicking and cable-news sniping.
“A win for this team is a win for women
everywhere,” says former U.S. captain
Abby Wambach. “If other women in the
business world, in parenting, see these
women stepping up and betting on them-
selves, it gives them the power to want to
do it for themselves. And that, my friend,
is how the world actually changes.”
No pressure or anything, not that Mor-
gan wasn’t feeling plenty already. Morgan,
29, is the face of Team USA—her steely
gaze will be plastered on billboards and
dancing across screens in commercials
for Coca-Cola, Nike and Secret deodor-
ant. Her millions of followers on Insta-
gram and Twitter give her one of the larg- GET T Y IMAGES (3)
est social-media imprints of any female