Soccer Star Alex Morgan Has Retired from Competition—Both on and off the Field
Tired of being pitted against other moms, she's partnering with organic formula company Bobbie for their campaign 'There’s No Scoreboard in Motherhood'By Mara SantilliSeptember 4, 2025
In 2020, at seven months pregnant, Alex Morgan was still training with the US Women’s National Soccer Team. In a viral video, you can see her doing drills in a sweatshirt that reads “LFG USA.” It was clear the soccer star had no intentions of giving up her love for the sport when she became a parent.
Morgan, now 36, played a pivotal role in helping build the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL)—widely considered the world’s best professional women’s soccer league—both as a player beginning in 2013, and now as an investor in her former club, the San Diego Wave. In addition to her three years as a forward on the Wave, her résumé also includes two Olympic medals with the US Women’s National Soccer Team and two World Cup championships. But it’s her accomplishments off the field—building a family alongside her husband, former pro soccer player Servando Carrasco, and raising two kids—that she hopes serves as an inspiration for other athletes who are also moms.
She gave birth to her daughter, Charlie, in May 2020 and returned to the field less than six months later, which was a longer break than she would have had if the Tokyo 2020 Olympics had not been postponed to 2021. The mental and physical strain was difficult enough that she decided growing her family meant speeding up her retirement from soccer. Early into her second pregnancy, in September 2024, Morgan decided to end her 15-year professional career and gave birth to a son, Enzo, in March.
Morgan is now speaking out about her pregnancy, the postpartum pressures athletes face, and how she’s hanging up the stigma of moms being compared to one another—along with her cleats.
“It's been so great just being able to take a lot more time this time around with the kids,” she tells SELF. Today, life six months postpartum looks much different than it did the first time around. “I mean, at this time, with [Charlie], I was moving to London to play with Tottenham Hotspur.” Plus, it was 2020—so she was dealing with a pandemic, tending to her postpartum body, and adjusting to a new country and city. Morgan was simultaneously prepping for the Tokyo Olympics, and says she felt like the only person who was parenting while playing on the US Women’s National Team. “I felt my body stretching in ways I wasn’t used to before,” she says.
After her second pregnancy, she didn’t push herself to her physical limits. “I felt like I took care of my body, but I also gave it the grace to not go on a run or get in the gym,” she says. “And my body responded really well this time around, in being able to give birth and get back to feeling good. I actually feel like it was the not having all that pressure on myself to get back quickly on the field.”
Though most of us don’t face the same physical pressures as pro athletes, there is one aspect of new motherhood Morgan describes that is entirely relatable: breastfeeding stress. Like many new parents, Morgan worried about whether her baby was getting enough milk to hit all of the right growth markers. On top of that, she was focused on getting back in the gym and on the field. With her second, “I just listened to my motherly instinct,” says Morgan, who proudly shares that she’s combo feeding her son breastmilk and formula, and says there’s nothing “unhealthy” or “imperfect” about it.
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Get nutrition tips, delicious recipes, and inspo for your grocery list delivered to your inbox just in time for your weekly meal prep.SIGN UPBy signing up, you agree to our user agreement (including class action waiver and arbitration provisions), and acknowledge our privacy policy.In an attempt to shake off the pressure of the postpartum “snapback” and counter the idea that breastmilk is the only appropriate way to feed a baby, Morgan decided to partner with organic infant formula company Bobbie for their new campaign, There’s No Scoreboard in Motherhood. Taking note from other famous moms on the company’s “Motherboard,” like tennis star Naomi Osaka and model Ashley Graham, Morgan joined in celebrating the company’s nonjudgmental support of moms.
And it’s helped her in her feeding journey with her son too. “I don't want to come to a point where I’m really stressed about finishing breastfeeding or looking at combo feeding and not have a place to turn confidently,” Morgan says. “There's this sort of stigma where moms feel like they can’t talk about their feeding journey because of fear of being judged by other moms.”
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Her partnership feels like a natural extension of her advocacy work in the NWSL league and on the US Women’s National Team. In 2021, Morgan joined forces with Orlando Pride teammates Sydney Leroux, Ashlyn Harris, and Ali Krieger, who at the time had four children between them, to negotiate better parental leave and childcare benefits for women soccer players. “This was something that we had to do for ourselves to continue playing,” says Morgan.
The NWSL signed a Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2022, guaranteeing fully paid salaries for players throughout their pregnancies, plus paid parental leave for birth and adoptive parents. “That’s created a pathway for these athletes to play and have their career a lot longer than initially thought,” Morgan adds. They no longer have to choose between retiring early to start a family and continuing to play for a full salary. And athletes don’t have to be pushed to get back on the field immediately after birth. “You can’t go from birthing a baby to playing soccer in six weeks. It’s just not realistic and creates more injuries,” says Morgan.
She negotiated with her most recent NWSL club, the San Diego Wave, as well as the US National team for better accommodations for players traveling with babies and small children, and for nursing moms who might be either bringing their babies along or need support with pumping. Morgan advocated for children of Wave players to be given their own airplane seat at age one, particularly for long, cross-country flights. While many teammates had the luxury of being able to rest on the flight before training and playing a game the following day, moms like Morgan would be holding a baby the entire time. “That just is not giving me the support that I need in order to excel at my sport,” she says.
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For Morgan, “saying ‘there is no scoreboard in motherhood’ is all about supporting each other and getting the support that we really need,” she explains. It means that female athletes can parent in the way that’s most comfortable for them and get the benefits they deserve while they do their jobs.
As Morgan adjusts to the pace of retirement, her main focus is her family’s well-being. Her daughter, Charlie, recently decided she “likes her baby brother,” Morgan laughs. In her book, that’s as big a win as any World Cup victory.
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