Brian’s Back… Back-To-Back (Morgan Brian interview)

Morgan Brian was the youngest player in the United States squad that won the 2015 World Cup, and started throughout it in the defensive midfield role. Four years later she won it again, but the route back was a rebuild: coaching changes cost her the starting place she had held for a long stretch, and she is frank that making the 2019 squad at all mattered more to her than the tournament. She describes 2019 as one for the books on two counts – the World Cup, and a Chicago Red Stars season that took the club to its first NWSL Championship game and which she calls among her most enjoyable as a professional. The through-line is her argument that success is sweeter on the far side of a run of setbacks.