U.S. women’s national team star Trinity Rodman said she is interested in leaving the NWSL to play for a team in Europe sometime in the future, which would make her the latest in a long list of international teammates who have made the move across the Atlantic Ocean.
Rodman has spent the entirety of her professional career with the Washington Spirit, who drafted her in 2021 after she chose to skip college. She quickly became the team’s marquee player, winning Rookie of the Year honors and the NWSL Championship in 2021 and then earning a nomination for MVP in 2024 as the Spirit made a run to the Championship.
“I’ve always thought about playing overseas at some point in my career,” she said, per ESPN. “I think I would kick myself if I retired and hadn’t done that. So it’s just a matter of when I think. But yeah, just focused on this year and we’ll see what happens when the time is right.”
The Olympic gold medalist will compete for the Spirit this season, though she missed Friday’s NWSL Challenge Cup triumph over the Orlando Pride as she continues to deal with a lingering back injury.
Rodman is in the final year of her $1.1 million contract with the Spirit, though the deal includes an option year for the 2026 NWSL season. Chelsea and Arsenal were among several clubs who looked into signing her this winter, per Give Me Sport, though it is unclear if any of them approached Rodman or the Spirit formally.
USWNT’s European sojourn
Should Rodman make the move to Europe, she would join a handful of USWNT colleagues who recently did the same. Defender Naomi Girma joined Chelsea from the San Diego Wave this winter in a $1.1 million move that set a new transfer fee record in women’s soccer, while Crystal Dunn and Jenna Nighswonger left NJ/NY Gotham FC for Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal, respectively.
Four other members of the USWNT that competed at last month’s SheBelieves Cup also currently play for clubs in Europe – Lyon’s Lindsey Heaps, Arsenal’s Emily Fox, Ajax’s Lily Yohannes and PSG’s Korbin Albert. Fox made the move from the North Carolina Courage last year as a free agent, while Heaps has been with Lyon since 2022. Yohannes and Albert, meanwhile, have spent the entirety of their professional club careers at their current clubs.
USWNT’s history in Europe
A sizable number of USWNT players have competed for European clubs throughout the national team’s history, usually taking advantage of certain blocks of time in the four year cycle that conclude with the Women’s World Cup and Olympics. This year marks the start of a new four year cycle, and so Girma, Dunn and Nighswonger are not the first to use the first post-Olympics year as an opportunity to try something new – Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd moved to Lyon and Manchester City, respectively, in 2017.
Timing has also facilitated moves from the NWSL to Europe for USWNT players in other ways, too. Megan Rapinoe played for Lyon in 2013 shortly before joining the Seattle Reign midway through the inaugural NWSL season, while Sam Mewis and Rose Lavelle moved to Manchester City in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the NWSL’s schedule.
All of those players who made the move eventually came back to the NWSL, with none of Morgan, Lloyd, Mewis or Lavelle playing more than a season in Europe during those particular stays.
Heaps and Fox have already opted to stay on that side of the Atlantic Ocean for a longer period of time, though they benefit from new contractual mechanisms in the American women’s game. The U.S. Soccer Federation is no longer obligated to pay USWNT players’ NWSL salaries, per a 2021 agreement reached in the midst of the players’ successful equal pay battle. It allowed USWNT players’ club contracts to resemble their counterparts elsewhere in the women’s game and in the men’s game, allowing for more freedom of movement.
