Meet the 2019 U.S. Women's World Cup team

At the last World Cup, Hope Solo was the star in net. No longer on the team, somebody had to step into her cleats, and that job has fallen to Naeher. The Penn State alum and former NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year, Naeher has been the No. 1 goalie for the U.S. since Solo left the squad, and she’s been up to the task so far.

Meet the next star of U.S. women’s soccer. Pugh is only 21, but the striker already has 16 goals for the national team in 53 caps. Granted, they’ve almost all come in friendlies, but she got in three games during the 2016 Olympics. She’s not ready to be the top striker yet, but don’t be surprised if she makes an impact.

Mewis, a midfielder, and her sister, Kristie, played together in the 2008 U-17 World Cup, the first sisters to do that for the United States. Alas, Kristie isn’t on this year’s World Cup team, but Sam is. This will be her first major tournament, unless you are a Tournament of Nations fan. She’s won two titles with her NWSL team. Will she taste World Cup victory as well?

Sauerbrunn is one of the old heads of this team. The 34-year-old has 158 caps, and this will be her third Women’s World Cup. She started every game at the 2015 World Cup, but will she be able to handle that kind of workload at this point? Her former teammate Christie Pearce played in the finals of 2015 at 40. Sauerbrunn is basically a spring chicken in comparison.

O’Hara and Sauerbrunn are teammates with the Utah Royals as well as with the national team. The 30-year-old is versatile, playing at wing and midfielder for the United States and forward and defense for her club squad. O’Hara has scored only two goals for the U.S., but one of them came in the semifinals of the 2015 Women’s World Cup against Germany.

Brian was a beast in college, winning the Hermann Trophy, college soccer’s equivalent of the Heisman, in 2013 and 2014. That led to her being the top pick in the 2015 NWSL Draft. The midfielder dealt with a head injury in 2018, but she’s healthy now and should be primed to contribute at this year’s World Cup.

Dahlkemper hasn’t had a chance to compete in a World Cup or Olympics yet, as she didn’t get her first cap until October of 2016. However, she’s only 26, so there’s plenty of time for her. The year 2018 was big for her, as she appeared in a few tournaments with the U.S. and also made the Best XI of the NWSL and was the league’s Defender of the Year in 2017. She’s the kind of player who could help ease the strain for the veterans on the team’s defense.

Ertz is about to make things tough for attacking players on opposing teams. Since being moved into a defensive midfielder role, her tenacity has made things miserable for opponents. Her play has also earned her the honor of being named the U.S. Women’s Soccer Player of the Year. If her last name sounds familiar, it's because she’s married to Zach Ertz of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Horan has had an impressive club career. She played for PSG for several years, scoring 46 goals in 58 games. Since coming back to America, she has 22 goals in 58 games for the Portland Thorns. In fact, the midfielder was the MVP of the 2018 NWSL season. However, Horan hasn’t quite found her footing with the national team. She wasn’t on the 2015 World Cup squad, and she has only eight goals with the American squad.

At 36, Lloyd is the oldest player on this year’s team. You have to keep her around, as she is a living American soccer legend. Lloyd has scored 110 goals with the national team, including a hat trick in the finals against Japan in 2015. Obviously, she doesn’t have the legs she used to, but scorers never lose that knack.

Krieger just got her 100th cap for the national team, playing strong defense game in and game out. Just don’t expect any goals, as she has only one in her career with the American squad. For a time, Krieger was the rare U.S. women’s player who plied her trade overseas, as she played for 1. FFC Frankfurt from 2007 through 2012. In that time, she won the Champions League.

On the flip side of the 36-year-old Lloyd, Davidson is the youngest player on this team. She’s only 20 and just finished her college career at Stanford. In fact, she’d probably still be at Stanford, except the NWSL changed its rules to allow players to be drafted before finishing up four years of college play. Thus, Davidson became the first-overall pick in the 2019 NWSL Draft, and now she gets to go to France for the Women’s World Cup.

Morgan is arguably the star, face and best player of the American squad. That’s what happens when you are a supremely talented striker still in your prime. The 29-year-old recently scored her 100th career international goal, and she now has 101 in 163 games. If the U.S. team is going to go far in this tournament, it’ll need Morgan to be on her game.

Sonnett has played sporadically for the U.S. since making her debut in 2015. She’s appeared in 33 games, often an injury replacement. That being said, at 25 she’s still in her early prime, and she’s had success in the NWSL for the Portland Thorns alongside Lindsey Horan.

If Morgan isn’t the face of the U.S. team, Rapinoe is. Fittingly those two, along with Lloyd, are the co-captains of this team. She’s great with the ball in her feet, and her trademark platinum blonde hair makes her stand out in the midfield as well. Rapinoe is also part of a sports power couple, as she and basketball star Sue Bird have been in a relationship for a couple of years and appeared on the cover of ESPN the Magazine’s “Body Issue” together.

Lavelle made her national team debut in 2017, and she turned out a couple of good performances in 2018. She scored three goals in the CONCACAF Championship, including the winning goal in the title game against Canada. Before that the 24-year-old put the Wisconsin Badgers on the women’s soccer map. When she was an All-American, it was the first time a Wisconsin player had done that since 1991.

This will be Heath’s third World Cup. It will be hard for her to top her 2016 when she was named the U.S Women’s Soccer Player of the Year, but she’s in great form. She already has five goals in 2019, including one in the team's recent tune-up against Mexico, and she is coming off her best season in the NWSL. Also, “Tobin Heath” is just a cool name.

Harris was in a competition with Naeher to replace Hope Solo as the first-choice goalie for this team. Unfortunately for Harris, she lost out on that battle, and as a 33-year-old backing up a 31-year-old, she likely doesn’t have any starts in her future, at least in a major tournament like this one. At least Harris is the starting goalkeeper for the Orlando Pride, and she and her teammate Ali Krieger are engaged.

Dunn will be making her World Cup debut in 2019. She may have been on the 2015 team, but an ill-timed foot injury took that off the table. She was only 22 at the time, though, but Dunn has been making her mark from a young age. Dunn was the NWSL’s MVP in 2015, when she was only 23. That’s a league record. On top of that, she once scored five goals in one game for the national team.

File this one under “better late than never.” Long will be making her World Cup debut at the age of 31. She may not play much — she’s gotten most of her caps in friendlies — but at least she will be there. Long also has a successful history as a futsal player, often playing on men’s teams. These days, though, she’s focused on her NWSL career with Reign FC.

Franch has had a lot of success at the club level. She was named the NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year in 2017 and 2018, the first player to pull that off in back-to-back years. That being said, she’s also the third-string keeper for the U.S., thus she’s as far from seeing the field as anybody on this roster.

This is a bit of a surprise, at least given McDonald’s international track record. That is to say, she barely has one. Despite being 31, she has only seven caps with the U.S. senior team. However, she’s a forward who stands 5-foot-10, so if the team needs somebody with size in the box, you never know what could happen.

And we’ve reached the final player on the roster. Not that Press is some sort of slouch just because she wears the number 23. Press has 48 goals for the American squad, but she had arguably her greatest success in Sweden. Earlier in her career, the forward played for Tyreso FF in the Swedish league and scored 23 goals in 22 games. This led the league, making Press the first American to ever achieve that.

Don’t forget about the coach. After years of success as a college coach, especially at UCLA, Ellis finally got the big job for the United States in 2014. Ellis led the U.S. to victory at the 2015 Women’s World Cup, which allowed her to keep the gig for this year’s tournament. Of course, international soccer managers don’t often stick around for too many cycles, so this will probably be the last World Cup in which Ellis coaches this team.