SAN DIEGO — Last week, I tossed out my plans to be in Washington D.C. for a different NWSL match and booked a last-minute flight to San Diego. I then stood on the field at Snapdragon Stadium, staring through my camera lens at Alex Morgan, the athlete, one more time. I watched every microexpression flicker past, every smile, every time she blinked back tears, and the times she failed to. I pressed the button every time something felt like it could somehow capture the magnitude of the moment, yards away but able to compress the distance between us simply with a twist of the lens.
There was distance too — there had to be — between Alex Morgan, the image, and Alex Morgan, the human.
When Morgan stepped off the pitch in her socks on Sunday, boots in hand, it had only been three days since she had announced her retirement from professional soccer at age 35.
The lack of notice and Morgan’s lengthy video explaining her decision, announcing that she and husband Servando Carrasco are expecting their second child, meant there would be no long farewell tour. Fans would only have days, not months, to contemplate what women’s soccer would look like without Morgan on the field.
Her abrupt retirement set off a scramble, all the emotions of sending off one of the game’s best,…
