Rose Lavelle: First World Cup Memories

A short first-person piece in which Rose Lavelle, heading to her first World Cup at 24, recalls the tournaments that made her want one. She remembers watching Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly and Julie Foudy while they were still playing and realising she wanted to be in their shoes, then climbing onto her top bunk and crying after the United States lost the 2003 semi-final to Germany. Her happier memory is Abby Wambach’s 122nd-minute header against Brazil in 2011, watched at a soccer camp with two hundred other girls on televisions across the building, which she reads as the essence of the team’s never-say-die character. On France she is complimentary about the hosts and enthusiastic about croissants, and insists her only focus is whatever role the squad needs.