There is a lot that one could say about Alyssa Naeher, and much of it has already been said in the past 24 hours after the longtime U.S. women’s national team goalkeeper announced her retirement from the international game.
She told The Women’s Game on Tuesday that she’d had an inkling since the beginning of the year that she might retire, noting that she’d accomplished what she’d set out to do.
In a 15-year career with the USWNT, Naeher has established herself as one of the best goalkeepers to ever wear the crest. But if you ask Naeher, the thought that she wanted to play for the national team one day came in stages as she made her way through the youth system. While she knew already at the time that she eventually wanted to play professionally, playing at the U-20 World Cup, she says, was transformative for her goals.
“To be able to go through a U-20 experience and to go to the World Cup at the youth level and to play for Tony DeCiccio at the time was incredible,” Naeher told the media on Wednesday. “You know, he treated us like he treated the 99ers and like he treated the full team. I think that prepared me, and others who were on that team, of what it would be like to be at a senior World Cup someday.”
Another formative moment Naeher cited was when Tracey Leone, who coached the U-19 USWNT from 2001 through 2004, pulled players together in a room to show them that their dreams of playing on the senior national team were close.
“She had a list written on the board of their 21 players that had gone to the previous U-19 World Cup,” Naeher said, noting that roughly 19 of those 21 players had gotten a chance to play at the senior level. “I think all of us in that room in that moment were kind of like, ‘all right, this is really cool. This is something that if we can kind of work at and keep improving and keep getting better, we can use this as hopefully, you know, something that can help us get to the senior team someday.’”
Looking back on Naeher’s career, it’s not an overnight success story. It’s a story of taking those incremental steps and being surrounded by great coaches. There’s no big moment where she proved herself; instead, lots of little ones, as she puts it. Nothing happened overnight, and now, on the tail end of her time with the national team, she leaves as one of the greatest to ever wear the crest.
Part of it is the way that she is cool under pressure and thrives in big moments. It’s also the way she committed herself to getting better each and every day.
“Everything came with incremental steps and trying to make small improvements around your game,” she said. “And then make sure when you got your opportunity, you were ready for it, you could grasp it, and hold on.”
After taking the starting job from Hope Solo in 2017, Naeher has held on for the last seven years. In that time, she’s helped lead the USWNT to glory at the 2019 World Cup, the 2024 Olympics and a bronze at the Tokyo Olympics. She’s third all-time in goalkeeper caps (113), starts (110), wins (88) and shutouts (68). Her four clean sheets at the Paris Olympics are the most by any USWNT goalkeeper at a single Olympics, and she’s the only U.S. goalkeeper to record a clean sheet in the final of both a World Cup and an Olympics.
A brick wall in penalty shootouts, she’s the first goalkeeper in USWNT history to have made three or more saves in a PK shootout. She’s also been known to sink shots herself, having done so at the 2023 World Cup, as well as this year’s CONCACAF Women’s Gold Cup and the 2024 SheBelieves Cup. She was the only goalkeeper to be nominated for the Ballon d’Or Féminin this year, finishing at No. 17 out of the 30 finalists.
Safe to say, it’s not easy to replace a goalkeeper of this caliber. The USWNT will have to, though, calling in Utah Royals’ Mandy Haught and Manchester United’s Phallon Tullis-Joyce to this current camp. Neither has significant experience wearing the crest, Haught with one cap and Tullis-Joyce with none.
While there hasn’t been a lot of conversation yet between Naeher and the young goalkeepers about passing on wisdom, she said Wednesday that she has “a lot of respect for what both of them have done professionally.”
“I think they both have very high ceilings and my encouragement to them has been to just take in as much information as you can,” Naeher said. “Try to learn and be as adaptable again, find and own what their strengths are as goalkeepers, what makes them special, what makes them unique, what makes them stand out and stand apart from the others.
“Also try to really lock in on what the team is trying to do and what the game plans are and how you as a goalkeeper can fit into the greater system within that. Because that’s obviously really important for, you know, at the end of the day, the objective of a goalkeeper is to keep the ball out of the back of the net.”
Other potential Naeher replacements include North Carolina Courage’s Casey Murphy, who has been the team’s steady No. 2 since 2022. She’s completed 15 shutouts in 20 appearances for the USWNT. Houston’s Jane Campbell could also warrant a look, having been part of the system since 2017, as well as Washington Spirit keeper Aubrey Kingsbury.
“I’m excited about the crop of goalkeepers that we have coming up,” Naeher said. “I think what I’ve tried to at least show and instill in the future generations is just the power of preparation, the mindset going into training, the preparedness of what it looks like to be able to play at this level.
“And I think having that, we’ve always been able to have in this environment, as competitive as it is, it’s always also been very supportive.”
As Naeher makes her exit, players are singing her praises, with Sam Coffey calling her the “gold standard” of what it looks like to play for the USWNT.
“It’s such a massive legacy,” Coffey said during a media scrum on Wednesday. “It’s another one that’s hard to put into words. It’s impossible to imagine this team without her, she is someone that embodies everything that we are. She’s the best that I think US Soccer is and has had such an incredible career.”
