Over the past several years, Alex Morgan has been the biggest star on the United States Women’s National Team. But when the team released its roster ahead of the upcoming Gold Cup, Morgan got some pretty horrible news: she didn’t make the team.
On Wednesday, the USWNT released its 23-player roster ahead of this month’s 2024 Concacaf Women’s Gold Cup and it looks like interim manager Twila Kilgore has decided to go with a much younger roster that includes nine players born after the U.S. won the 1999 FIFA women’s World Cup instead of offering Alex Morgan a spot on the team.
“We have quite a few players that are not in camp that we’re still looking at and evaluating, in terms of leading up toward the Olympics,” Kilgore said in a news conference Wednesday. “Nobody is out of the mix. That goes for some of our bigger names; that goes for lesser names that we’ve been tracking. … This is more about that there can only be 23 people on the roster, and as we head toward the Olympics, only 18 [on that squad].”
This is the second-to-last tournament before the USWNT heads to the Olympics, so Morgan is running out of time and opportunities to prove that she belongs on the roster.
“In terms of Alex, and I guess this just goes for really everybody that’s not here — everything that happens in the Gold Cup will matter in terms of the future, and everything that is happening outside of the Gold Cup will matter in the future,” Kilgore said according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “We will be watching, and we want to pick the best team, and it’s going to be very competitive.”
Morgan is now 35 years old and it looks like she is getting passed by some younger players.
