As soon as Becky Sauerbrunn became captain of the U.S. women’s national team, she began preparing the squad to one day be without her.
It wasn’t that she felt retirement was imminent when she landed the captaincy in January 2021. (Hardly.) But she had been around long enough to know the value of planning ahead. Sauerbrunn was first called up to the national team in ’08. The center back had played through coaching changes and strategy shifts. She had been on the fringes of the roster and on the pitch for every minute of a triumphant World Cup. And she knew how important it was for the team to have more than one pillar of leadership.
Coach Vlatko Andonovski had asked Sauerbrunn to hold the captaincy on her own—no regular co-captain. She was honored. But she was also committed to bringing other people into the fold. Sauerbrunn wanted everyone on the roster to feel empowered, an environment where the youngest players were comfortable speaking up and those slightly older were ready for their own budding leadership roles. Sauerbrunn hoped the team would not depend too heavily on her and her fellow veterans. “We need to pass this torch on,” she says. “And we need to do it in a way that’s as smooth and seamless as possible.” Eventually, Sauerbrunn knew, they would not be on the roster, and she wanted a foundation for success after her generation was gone.
Even with all that planning, however, Sauerbrunn never imagined the team would be without her as soon as July 2023.
The news that a foot injury would sideline her this summer was shattering. Weeks before the World Cup, preparing to vie for an unprecedented third straight title, the team learned it would be missing its captain.
The injury was devastating for 38-year-old Sauerbrunn. “Heartbroken isn’t even the half of it,” she wrote in a statement. But it was nearly as difficult for her team. Sauerbrunn’s absence meant the loss of a calm, cerebral presence on the back line, an essential piece of the defense. It also threatened to destabilize the leadership model. Sauerbrunn had guided the team through a series of difficult moments in her two and a half years as captain. She was its voice through challenges as varied as a dicey losing streak, injuries to multiple key contributors, reports of abuse in the National Women’s Soccer League and the settlement of the equal-pay lawsuit players filed against U.S. Soccer. The players embraced her as Captain America.
Now, as they are set to kick off their quest for a three-peat Friday against Vietnam, they face a World Cup without her.
Women’s World Cup Schedule: Group list, streaming information.
Sauerbrunn is perhaps as irreplaceable as any individual player can be. “Becky will always be our captain,” Andonovski said at a press conference. “That’s how everybody feels.” Yet she’d worked diligently to ensure the team could function without her. She didn’t think it would happen quite like this. But since becoming captain—guided by past trials and disappointments of her own—Sauerbrunn tried to fortify the team for a moment like this one.
She was tasked from the start with leading the team through a time of transition. With injuries, tweaks and other recent movements, that’s become even more striking: 14 of the 23 names on this roster are at their first World Cup. (Two of the nine returning players, Alex Morgan and Lindsay Horan, will share the captaincy in Sauerbrunn’s place.) It’s a level of turnover that asks for strong leadership. But for Sauerbrunn, leading in transition always meant developing power throughout the squad, rather than consolidating it for herself. And that laid the groundwork for the team to navigate this summer without her.
“What’s great about the national team is that there are so many leaders, and they’re all very different in how they lead,” Sauerbrunn says. “And hopefully, I’ve empowered others to feel like their leadership styles are very valued and needed.”
