In a recent issue of Time, Alex Morgan was the subject of the magazine’s featured interview. Even those readers like myself who don’t usually keep up with soccer, might have heard her name recently. The United States soccer team has just won the World Cup quarterfinals, and Alex Morgan is one of the team’s stars.
In 2011, she was the youngest player on the United States team at the FIFA Women’s World Cup. In 2012, she scored the game-winning goal in a semifinal match against Canada and became an Olympic gold medalist. That same year she joined Mia Hamm’s record in accumulating goals and assists. This was the year that she was honored as one of the top three women players in the world.
In the Time interview, she recalls attending the FIFA World Player of the Year event in 2012, where she learned that Sepp Blatter, FIFA president, did not know who she was. One of the top three women in soccer and the head of the soccer organization did not know her. Now many of you may know the name Sepp Blatter because, even though you—like myself—may not follow soccer, his name has been plastered all over the news recently when he resigned as president of FIFA after the organization was exposed for taking bribes when awarding the site for the World Cup.
This little blog post is an effort to help make Alex Morgan’s name better known outside her usual circle of enthusiastic fans. Maybe she will become as well known as Sepp Blatter. (It’s so hard not to make a disgusting pun on that name!) And maybe she will be famous for good sportsmanship, rather than dishonesty.
