The United States women’s national team won a fifth Olympic gold medal this year before a string of retirement announcements for veteran stars including Alex Morgan, Alyssa Naeher and Kelley O’Hara. After Saturday’s game against England at Wembley Stadium and next week’s showdown with the Netherlands in The Hague, the team will shift its attention to a much-anticipated January summit in Southern California, where senior players will join federation staff and a “Futures Camp” of, effectively, the next couple of dozen players on head coach Emma Hayes’ radar.
From there, Hayes will weed out players to figure out who will be part of the pool she develops in preparation for the 2027 World Cup.
Hayes is known to have an eye for talent, so we can expect to see plenty of intriguing call-ups for that January camp. Those two adjacent rosters could drastically shift our player pool rankings. For now, though, we’re going with who we think the top 50 players in the pool are based on form for club and country over the past year. Some remain uncapped. Plenty are on ESPN FC’s 2024 Women’s Rank, the world top 50 that we just unveiled (although this writer’s individual vote varied from the combined list).
Players who have announced their retirement have been omitted. We also omitted a few players due to long-term injuries, although in one prominent case (see: No. 6), there was a large enough body of work from the season to evaluate.
So, who are the best of the best from the stars you know? And who might be in the pool right now without you even realizing it? Let’s get to it.
