She compares wages - on average, women on “the National Women’s Soccer team earn between $6,842 and $37,800 while members of Major League Soccer earn an average salary exceeding $200,000 World Cup final against Japan attracted 750 million viewers worldwide and was the most watched soccer match in U.S. I think about where I am: twenty-four years old, just a few steps away from being a powerful, self-sufficient woman, someone who never considered relying on a man or anyone else for my well-being and success, someone with an Olympic gold medal.īut the athlete doesn’t just get mad, she is an advocate making a case for equal pay for women’s soccer players. When she overhears a mother in a restaurant tell her seven- or eight-year-old daughter “You need to find a good man to have a good life, just like I found your father,” Wambach can’t help but seethe: Photo Credit.īest of all, Wambach looks at her world through a feminist lens. It’s that ability to assess her own motivations that steps Forward up beyond other sports memoirs I’ve read.

For instance, she admits she doesn’t love soccer, but the “validation that comes from mastering it.” Wambach explains, “For thirty years scoring goals was my currency, the one skill I could barter for security and acceptance and love.” In fact, Wambach has scored more professional soccer goals - 184 - than any other human. Instead of describing each pep talk, pass, and goal, Wambach explores her desire to be loved. Wambach eats junk food and drinks too much, falls into and out of shape, goes through multiple relationships in which she thinks she’s in love and buys outrageous gifts to prove it. Wambach is wildly undisciplined compared to Lloyd’s painfully perfect image (always fit, a long-term boyfriend who becomes her husband, incredibly kind). In high school, Wambach struggles with her sexual identity, which she hides from her parents until she goes to college. She’s convinced by a sibling to keep playing. Each chapter title is a label she would give herself, such as “rebel,” “teammate,” “lesbian,” “depressive,” and “captain.” The story begins with little Abby, who excels at soccer but doesn’t love it. While Lloyd’s book focused largely on soccer itself, even giving a play-by-play of the more important games, Wambach looks at her identity.

She played on the same teams as Abby Wambach, whose 2016 memoir, Forward, takes a different approach to the same subject: what is it like to be a professional female soccer player when such a thing didn’t exist that long ago? A few years ago, I read Carli Lloyd’s 2016 memoir, When Nobody Was Watching. Around the same time period, women’s professional soccer has grown in leaps and bounds, garnering well-deserved attention for the success of the women’s team in the Olympics, the Women’s World Cup, and the fight for pay equality.

In the last five years, I’ve gotten into soccer.

Abby wambach autobiography