Merritt Mathias, a true NWSL original, has announced her retirement following the conclusion of her 2024 season with Angel City FC.
A player who featured in the first-ever NWSL match, with FC Kansas City in April 2013, Mathias will retire just shy of her 200th regular-season cap at 196, but as one of the few players to reach over 14,000 minutes played. She will celebrate her retirement game with Angel City on October 20.
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Mathias also retires as a three-time NWSL champion and three-time NWSL shield-winner from her time with FC Kansas City, Seattle Reign and North Carolina Courage, as well as U.S. youth national team appearances and a single USWNT senior cap in 2018. She also worked with the NWSL Players Association on collective bargaining agreements, securing additional protections for player safety and more.
“She’s just someone who is a dirty dog,” Angel City teammate Christen Press said. “She will do what it takes to get it done. She has our generation’s winning mentality — fight first and not be deterred.”
“I didn’t go into this season, the 12th year of my NWSL career, thinking that I would retire,” Mathias told The Athletic last week ahead of her public announcement. She had come back from two knee surgeries and had received a diabetes diagnosis, but she was determined to get back on the field with the Los Angeles-based team.
By the tail end of her time with North Carolina two years ago, Mathias had struggled to feel comfortable in her own body. She battled with fatigue, with doubt seeping in over whether she could still play at the level she expected herself to play at.
“I willed myself. I wanted to get to Angel City,” said the now 34-year-old, who left the Courage when she was traded to Angel City in January 2023.
“I had an idea of what I wanted my time here (in the NWSL) to look like, and it has objectively not gone the way that I wanted it to. So much of it is wonderful, and some of it is a bit disappointing. I believe that what I had done in my career warranted being able to play in a place like Angel City, with the atmosphere and the fan base and just everything that came with it.”
So when Mathias was sidelined for all of 2023 due to injury, she accepted, since she had already managed a comeback before in her career, that she could do it again. She came into preseason at the start of the calendar year ready and fit. “Grateful,” as she said, “to still be able to do this thing that I love to do and have the opportunity to do it at this level.”
Then, about two weeks before the 2024 season started, she got the flu and pneumonia. Her symptoms were worse because of her Type 2 diabetes. Recovery was slower. “I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m not stepping on the field for a home opener’, so I willed myself onto the field.” It was finally her Angel City debut, a year behind schedule, as a substitute against Bay FC on March 17 — a moment that filled her with pride, as hard as it was.
The next match, on the road against Orlando, she played again and felt better. “Holy s—t, I can run, I can play, I’m fit,” Mathias recounted. In week three, Mathias was on track to earn her first start, back in Kansas City against the Current. Instead, the pneumonia came back with a vengeance. It kept her out again, then she sprained an ankle during the Summer Cup in July and August, then she tweaked a calf. Now she’s dealing with a knee injury — a sprained MCL (medial collateral ligament) and ACL (anterior cruciate ligament).
“This year has been one of those things where I’ve come back and I’ve gained momentum to basically lose it again,” Mathias said. “It takes a lot out of you to do that. There is an acknowledgement that, through this time, while I love doing this thing that I’ve done for so long, I no longer am willing to do the hard thing in order to be great at an already-hard thing.”
Mathias asked herself if she was willing to put her body through all of this again, through the grind of another offseason. When, as she described it, it’s good, it’s great — but when things feel bad, the lows are so low. The more she thought about retirement, the more comfortable the idea got.
She had appreciated breaks like this before, like when she tore her ACL in 2019, and when the 2020 NWSL season didn’t happen because of the pandemic. “I was able to enter into therapy and really work on myself and prioritize myself, and not soccer,” said Mathias. “My comeback wasn’t prioritized. It couldn’t be.”
She’s far from the first one to have to make this call but Mathias said that, for any athlete, it’s hard to separate who you are as a person from what you do. It’s taken her those five full years to feel like Merritt Mathias, the person, who happens to play — “be great at”, as she interrupted herself — soccer.
But being so close to 200 NWSL caps, that was the thing she got stuck on. She wanted that number as a bow to tie onto her career. At Angel City, she changed her number to 12, marking the number of seasons she’s been in the NWSL — and the number of seasons the league has existed. “It all feels very poetic,” she said, her tone skewing into wistfulness. “The way it’s gone, I will end up being four appearances short of that.”
What’s funny is that Mathas knows she’s actually past that number if you count all the playoff appearances and extra competitions she’s played in over the years, but the record books track regular-season games. She called it bittersweet to fall short, then devastating.
“That is something that very few people have been able to do,” she said. “That number signifies so much of my longevity and my ability to play and stay great at a high level for as long as I did, but it’s also the competitor in me. Like, ‘F—k off! I’m so close!’”
As tantalizing as the number 200 was, she’s come around on leaving now. There are holidays to enjoy, weddings to attend, friends and family to see. There’s a whole new life ahead of her, controlled by Merritt Mathias the person, not the soccer player.
“Like most years in life, it’s been filled with disappointment and growth and beauty and acceptance,” she reflected. “I’ve worked really hard on allowing this thing that I love to not control so much of my life. It’s definitely been an extended process to reach the decision that I have, and feel comfortable in that decision, and feel very free and very proud of it.”
Her name might not have the same cachet as some of her more famous NWSL teammates throughout the years, but Mathias has been the definition of NWSL excellence on and off the field.
“Part of the legacy that Merritt leaves is a very tenured NWSL career that saw enormous changes,” Press said. “Through her advocacy, intellect, passion — she moved the needle. I think she is probably one of the first people I would think of as a model of a great NWSL career; won championships, made herself known, absolutely had a reputation in this league for someone you would never want to play against.”
Press couldn’t help but laugh at that one. Mathias never shied away from a tackle and picked up her fair share of cards over the years (and even a couple of suspensions in the 2016 and 2017 seasons). “I’ll end that there,” Press said with a smile.
Mathias can speak to the changes that have happened across the NWSL since that first season in 2013. She has seen all the good first-hand; all the bad too.
“I remember getting a call from some random number in Kansas City,” she said with a laugh, remembering how she was drafted ahead of that inaugural year. “It’s a man from Macedonia I could barely understand and he’s like, ‘We want to draft you to Kansas City’.”
That man was Vlatko Andonovski. The team was FC Kansas City, and he was the head coach. They didn’t win the championship that first season but they did in year two.
Then came her move to Seattle for the 2015 season — and the Reign took the Shield that year. Then North Carolina and double trophies: Shields and Championships alike in 2018 and 2019.
But those North Carolina years hold a lot of complications — on the one hand, it was a period during which Mathias feels she played some of the best soccer of her career, with a stacked team around her and all the relationships and friendships that were built along the way. But she also spent them under head coach Paul Riley, who was banned from the NWSL for life in 2023 following a joint NWSL and NWSL Players Association investigation into widespread misconduct among multiple teams in the league, with Riley accused of abusive behaviour and sexual coercion during head-coaching stints with several clubs in the league between 2011 and 2015.
“It took a lot of therapy sessions to work through just the untethering,” Mathias said. “You have to sit in the paradox of what is good and bad, and I think you have to sit in that all the time in life. That’s where the most growth happens and understanding and appreciation happen with being able to hold both.
“For me, I can honestly say that I was a victim of emotional abuse and it’s really hard to identify that because it’s so insidious, and you almost don’t trust it. (It was about) learning that and understanding I can be a victim of this, and in that same breath, hold that experience close to my heart for a really long time.”
Holding pain and pride at the same time isn’t anything new — not for Mathias.
When she signed for FC Kansas City, she said her paycheck was for an amount of money that didn’t have a comma in it. Today, the Current have their own soccer-specific stadium, and she’s right to say that doesn’t happen without her.
“That is such an incredible piece of history to be a part of,” she said. “I was directly involved in some of the mishandling of the NWSL for a long time. Every player that ever played in this league was, to some degree. There has to be some room for that, because it allows you to not make the same mistakes and to push and strive for better.”
Mathias will leave behind a legacy on the field but it’s her work with the NWSL Players Association that will truly be the foundation for the players that come after her. She was on the bargaining committee for the first collective bargaining agreement, setting the stage for the most recent update that will take the league through to 2030.
“You start to realize that in those rooms, you are one of the smartest people there because of the experience that you have,” Mathias said. “No one else can speak to that.”
“The strong spine of the NWSLPA was formed by players like Merritt,” players’ association director Meghann Burke said, citing her as one of the generation which built both the league and the union. “Her clear conviction, swagger, loyalty, and sense of humor have been a beacon for all of us over the past several years. She is unafraid to stand firm and speak the truth when it needs to be spoken, to be real when things are hard, or to cut through a moment with quick wit.”
Or, as Press said, if you give Mathias even a hint that she can do something, she’s going to do it. She was that kind of player and that kind of force off the field too. “She’s a light,” Press said. “Super-witty and sharp, and I know she’s going to be in women’s sports, and I know she’s going to do great things.”
“If anyone was asking me for real advice on how to organize a union, I’d tell them to find their Merritt Mathias,” Burke added. “She’s the definition of ride or die.”
This might not make most career retrospectives upon her announcement but Mathias will also forever live in NWSL lore thanks to two tweets following her ACL tear in 2019, sustained in a match against the Houston Dash after contact with Dash forward Rachel Daly. Mathias was initially whistled for the foul, but by the end of the sequence Daly had been awarded a yellow card and Mathias subbed out a few moments later after attempting to play on her injured knee.
“I did not tear my ACL…” Mathias wrote, in a tweet that she has never deleted. “My ACL was torn for me…”
I did not tear my ACL..
My ACL was torn for me..
I did not miss-step..
My foot did not “get stuck”..
It was not a feak accident..
My plant leg was intentionally kicked..
I was awarded a foul, and Houston awarded a free-kick..
It is due to a lack of respect, that I will not be— Merritt Mathias (@MerrittMathias) September 19, 2019
The two tweets were so instantly the stuff of legend, they even inspired one fan to record an interpretive dance (Mathias, somehow, had never seen it or realized it happened until this very conversation). At the time though, fans were pretty split on Mathias’ approach, taking offense at her directly calling out another player for an unintentional injury, or calling her out over her own reputation of physical play too. There were demands for her to look at her own history of extra suspensions. She’s always stood by tweeting it though, and that hasn’t changed all these years later.
When asked to reflect on it, Mathias couldn’t help herself from arguing that there’s never been a more significant NWSL tweet — a perfect encapsulation of how she approaches the world. She always wants to be the best.
“Listen, it was very much an unhealed version of me,” she said, laughing. “There’s pre-therapy Merritt and post-therapy Merritt.” But she didn’t sign up to be a role model either and that’s the beauty of the growth of this league in her eyes.
Mathias spoke to this idea that players are finally able to show their personalities, to react to these moments in real, human ways, or — gasp! — take to social media to cuss out another player after a season-ending injury. She embraced this change, especially compared to the early days of the NWSL.
“You get to choose who your favorite player is based on a full picture of this person, not this very curated look,” she said. “Some people might love me for that tweet and some people might hate me, but people are still talking about it, you know what I mean? And that’s OK!”
But while Mathias owned that element of her career, there was another where her vulnerability — those doubts that come creeping back in — was more clear. She’ll retire on a single USWNT cap having started her career at a time when the national team was valued above everything else. When she was growing up and playing in college, the WUSA (Women’s United Soccer Association) and then WPS (Women’s Professional Soccer) had come and gone. Her first season was in the WPSL Elite (Women’s Premier Soccer League) with the New York Fury.
“I deemed success as making the national team, winning World Cups and gold medals,” she said. “To fall short of that… there have been moments when I’ve had to process falling short of that.” For all that she has accomplished in her club career, she still measured herself by that stick. She still asked when she would get that opportunity, and feels now that in those moments of incredible success at the NWSL level, she did not hold space for those accomplishments the way she does now. She has redefined what success looks like for herself.
“I reflect on my career and what do I have left to do?” Mathias asked, before she answered her own question — there was nothing left for her to cross off the list. “I don’t have anything left to prove to myself. I’ve been very successful. I’ve been a part of incredible teams, championship teams. I’ve played for some of the best coaches this league has ever seen. I’ve negotiated historical CBAs.
“I entered this league in 2013 when it was absolutely nothing and it has significantly changed. I can be a part of the generation that left something so much better than when I found it.”
(Top photo: Eakin Howard/Getty Images)
