USWNT great Tobin Heath announces retirement

U.S. women’s soccer team great Tobin Heath has announced her retirement from soccer, almost three years after her last appearance and following multiple surgeries on a serious left knee injury.

Heath, 37, won two World Cups and two Olympic gold medals in a 13-year career with the USWNT. The midfielder, widely regarded as one of the most technically gifted players of her generation, made the last of her 181 appearances for the U.S. in 2021.

At club level, Heath won two NWSL championships with the Portland Thorns, as well as two NWSL Shields — one with the Thorns and the other with the Seattle Reign. Her final professional appearance came Aug. 14, 2022, in a 4-1 win for the Reign over Gotham FC.

“Over New Year’s, I actually came to the full acceptance that I wasn’t going to be playing, which was like a two-year, some might say three-year process of acceptance,” an emotional Heath said on “The RE-CAP Show” podcast she hosts with partner and former teammate Christen Press.

She added: “I tried f—ing everything to get back; I spent tens of thousands of dollars and [had] two surgeries, one crazy surgery. And the whole time, I believed I was going to get back. The writing was definitely on the wall; I just couldn’t accept, I think, that that was my ending.”

One of the most decorated figures in the wildly successful U.S. Soccer women’s program, she was named U.S. Soccer Female Athlete of the Year in 2016.

“I never played to be famous or for people to care about me,” she added. “I just played because I loved it.”

Heath also spent time in Europe, with Manchester United, Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain.

Information from Reuters was used in this report.