(Robin Alam/ISI Photos/Getty Images).
Sophia Smith has a U.S. women’s national team legend cheering her on as she heads to her first World Cup.
The present and future of the squad, Smith is just 22 years old. But you wouldn’t know it by the way she plays. And she will enter the tournament, which kicks off on July 20 in Australia and New Zealand, with high expectations.
The reigning NWSL MVP is the first woman born in the 2000s to earn a cap for the national team — and the first born after the USWNT’s historic 1999 World Cup win.
On Wednesday, the Portland Thorns posted a photo of a younger Smith posing with USWNT all-time leading scorer Abby Wambach alongside Smith’s official USWNT roster photo.
“Did we make it? Yes we did,” the Thorns wrote in the caption.
did we yes
make it? we did pic.twitter.com/rwh7n25h0P— Portland Thorns FC (@ThornsFC) June 21, 2023
Smith and her family no longer recall the exact circumstances behind the childhood photo, they told Just Women’s Sports reporter Eden Laase. They think it may have been…
