Alex Morgan won plenty of trophies during her career, but the former U.S. women’s national team star said her greatest achievement came away from the field.
Morgan retired in September, combining her retirement announcement with the news that she was pregnant with her second child.
The striker walked away after one of the most successful careers in USWNT history, scoring 123 goals in 224 caps while winning two World Cups (2015 and 2019) and one Olympic gold medal (2012).
But in an appearance on the “Not Gonna Lie” podcast with Kylie Kelce, Morgan said she considered her biggest career accomplishment to be achieving equal pay for the USWNT.

“If someone asked [what] my greatest achievement [was], I don’t know that it’s my biggest goal I ever scored, or the World Cup or the Olympics — it’s achieving equal pay on the international stage,” Morgan said.
“And creating that sort of butterfly effect that helped other women in other countries and in the U.S., with their leagues and their teams fight for equality in their sport and outside of their sport too.
“I was part of the [U.S. Soccer] Athletes’ Council, and I would see people on other councils step up and say, ‘You guys don’t deserve as much as you’re trying to get, you’re going to be taking away from kids.’ And I’m like, ‘We’re not trying to take away anything from anyone else, we’re just trying to get what we deserve.’”
The USWNT was involved in a six-year legal battle with U.S. Soccer, which finally ended in 2022 when the two sides settled a lawsuit filed in 2016. Five USWNT players, including Morgan, filed the original complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In May 2022, U.S. Soccer agreed to landmark collective bargaining agreements with the USWNT and the USMNT, which achieved the long-desired goal of equal pay between both teams.