Abby wambach stapled pro#
Abby wambach stapled professional#

When a microphone is shoved in her grill, she’s not exactly the type of athlete who lets forth with stock quotes about playing her best. “The reality is,” she continues, “I know women’s sports will have made it when we start talking about ‘playing like a girl’ and it’s a compliment.”įor more than a decade, Wambach’s influence on the game has been more than a matter of playing like a girl, though. I play like Abby Wambach, and I always have and I always will.’ But I also think, ‘Hey, you know what? I’m a female. I understand the sentiment – it’s supposed to be meant as a compliment. “Now, when you flip that on its head and say, ‘Oh that girl, she plays like a dude,’ I still find it offensive. “If somebody were to tell me that I play like a girl, that would be an offensive thing,” Wambach says. Sentient beings don’t watch her throw dome that aggressively without realizing that the best female soccer players rival their male counterparts in technique, speed and toughness.īut while Wambach is a breathtaking talent, there’s a gendered exceptionalism that often comes with praise of her play, which she knows is problematic: Namely that she plays “like a man.” For a lot of spectators, seeing Wambach skull-punt that soccer ball past the keeper is a come-to-Jesus moment. To mount the kind of scoring that’s her specialty, you either have to be incredibly stupid or completely fearless, and she isn’t stupid. During a match, Wambach is equal parts hammer and scalpel, pushing forward with blunt advances toward the goal and often finishing with deft, downright surgical diving headers.

Abby wambach stapled pro#

Since then, two women’s pro leagues have collapsed in the U.S., but Wambach has continued to rise, winning a pair of Olympic gold medals, being named FIFA World Player of the Year and eternally cementing her badass status when she had a gushing head wound stapled on-field in order to return to play after a literal head-on collision at a 2010 World Cup qualifier. But this experience was different, a heady rush of financial independence, recognition and that great love of her life, soccer. In college, she’d already been a star, bringing the Gators their first NCAA championship as a freshman and graduating as the University of Florida’s all-time leading scorer in 2001.

Abby wambach stapled professional#

It all started 12 years ago, when Wambach stepped onto the pitch for her first game as a professional soccer player and felt something entirely new. So when she talks about the sport – and her plans to ensure its future here in the U.S. I’m not just talking about women’s football, as those on the continent would say Wambach has scored more international goals than anyone, man or woman. No, you want to listen to Abby Wambach because she’s the best soccer forward in the world. You want to listen to Abby Wambach, not just because she’s an audacious bomb of vitality, not just because she’s a member of the United States Women’s National Team and not just because she’s more likely to punctuate a sentence with a diving header than a period.