Legendary goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher retires, taking her ever-present calm with her

By Steph YangThe moment is the 2019 World Cup semifinal match in France. U.S. women’s national team goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher has just saved a penalty from England captain Steph Houghton in the 84th minute to hold her team’s 2-1 lead. She read the moment correctly and dived to her right, smothering the ball on the ground.Her teammates mob her, only for Naeher to be clearly seen telling them to go, waving them back down the field. She said after the game that she didn’t want to get called for holding the ball too long. It was just one of many such moments for Naeher, a goalkeeper who went from being asked to step into the giant void left behind by her predecessor, Hope Solo, to steadily building her own immense reputation, one that the 38-year-old now leaves to be immortalized, announcing her retirement from professional soccer on Friday.Naeher was drafted 11th overall in the 2010 Women’s Professional Soccer draft to the Boston Breakers. She played two seasons in WPS and then went on a successful jaunt through the Bundesliga at Turbine Potsdam. She was poised to return to the United States ahead of the 2012 WPS season — amongst Boston fans there was palpable excitement at the time, only to see the WPS promptly collapse.“Ughh, should have stayed in germany (sic),” Naeher tweeted at the time.But come 2013, and the inception of the National Women’s Soccer League, there was Naeher in the blue and white of the Breakers once again, narrowly missing playoffs in their inaugural season.The years after that were ones of suffering for Breakers fans amidst terrible venues, constant bottom-of-the-table finishes, and at least one yearly multi-goal blowout, usually courtesy of the Portland Thorns. And yet these were also the years that helped found Naeher’s legacy as a pillar in goal. Thank goodness she didn’t stay in Germany.One only needs to look to her 2014 NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year award, the same season that the Breakers finished eighth out of nine teams with a -16 goal differential (that season’s blowout: a 6-3 loss to the Thorns in Providence Park). She had made 106 saves over 24 games that season and never seemed in danger of giving up despite the anguished defense of it all.That season is Naeher all over: quiet and unassuming, yet steady. She was never attributed the “flashy” moniker despite sometimes pulling off saves that seemed to stretch her body across an impossible 24 feet of goal at once. Nor was she the type of presence that always seemed to loom large. She was just there, with a comforting reliability.That’s not to say Naeher was never a giant on the field. Her 2023 World Cup penalty kick and save against Sweden was absolutely riveting, and not the last time she would stand on the spot in front of goal during a shootout either. Her regular rotation into those penalty lineups was a testament to her reputation for quiet strength, to her ability to keep a locker room calm and focused.It was a reputation that extended far beyond the field.Naeher was traded to the Chicago Stars (née Red Stars) ahead of the 2016 NWSL season, where she promptly gained a public image of the only one keeping various teammates’ lives together.While her teammates jokingly called her “Uncle,” stories constantly trickled out about Naeher being the one to come over and hang pictures, or to assemble bikes. At one point she was filmed by Morgan Gautrat pulling Vanessa DiBernardo out from behind a locker where she’d evidently gotten stuck.If Naeher herself was never one for a media moment, her teammates more than made up for it in their effusive praise and hints at someone with a deeply witty, and deeply private, personality.The glowing retrospectives for Naeher as she announces her professional retirement are particularly deserved given the ways she was questioned in 2019 at the World Cup. Naeher was not new to the national team, but 2019 was her first major tournament as starting goalkeeper.No press conference was complete without someone asking Naeher’s teammates whether they were worried about having to adapt to a new keeper behind them after a decade of Solo dominance. Her teammates never wavered in their public trust and support, to the point that defender Becky Sauerbrunn told media after the England semifinal, “Maybe for everyone else she needed that moment, but we knew what she was capable of and now the world knows what she’s capable of.”Maybe you haven’t been watching, but if you had been, you would have known by now not to question whether Naeher can handle pressure.The world indeed knows her capabilities now. But beyond the saves, the ice-cold penalties, the locker room leadership, the game is losing something harder to define.There are some presences that don’t feel overwhelming until they’re gone. Naeher laid her foundation of excellence brick by stern brick, with a calm stubbornness that could emerge like a wall out of the fog. She was one of the last remaining NWSL originals who had played in the league since its inception in 2013.After the last Stars game of the season, a 2-0 loss to the Spirit, Trinity Rodman was asked about Naeher’s potential retirement.“Oh, she’s coming back. She’s always coming back,” Rodman said breezily. She must have known as well as the media assembled the high likelihood it was the last club game of Naeher’s career. But it was also a nod to the way Naeher made people feel about her. She’ll come back. She’ll always be there. Games are fleeting; Uncles are forever.This article originally appeared in The Athletic.US Women's national team, Chicago Stars, NWSL, Women's Soccer2026 The Athletic Media Company