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Brandi Chastain and Shannon MacMillan are part of the 2016 elected class for the National Soccer Hall of Fame. They were announced Thursday along with Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber. Both players were on the 1999 World Cup winning team.
Chastain was elected from the player ballot, while MacMillan was elected as a veteran nominee and Garber was elected in the builder category.
Chastain became a transcendent icon following that World Cup when she hit the clinching penalty against China and promptly removed her shirt. In a lengthy career Chastain was capped by the United States on 192 occasions between 1988 and 2004. Along the way she was also on the 1991 World Cup winning team and gold medal teams in 1996 and 2004. In the 1999 World Cup quarterfinal against Germany she put the U.S. in an early hole by scoring a 5th minute own goal. But she recovered and scored for her team just after halftime helping the U.S. to a 3-2 victory on their way to the title.
MacMillan scored in group play against North Korea, one of her 60 goals across 176 caps between 1994 and 2006. Her most significant goals in a U.S. jersey came as a 21-year old at the 1996 Olympics. It was MacMillan’s golden goal that won the semifinal match against Norway and she scored again in the gold-medal match against China.
In 2000 Chastain and MacMillan and the rest of their 1999 World Cup teammates were named founding players in WUSA. Chastain was allocated to the Bay Area CyberRays and helped that team win the inaugural Founders Cup–scoring a goal in the match–in 2001. MacMillan went to the San Diego Spirit. Chastain also played for FC Gold Pride in 2009, the first season of WPS.
Garber has been commissioner of Major League Soccer since 1999 and has helped steward the league through exponential growth.
Among female candidates, Tiffany Roberts, also part of the 1999 team, was in her final year of eligibility.
