Longtime United States women’s national soccer team ahead and two-time World Cup winner Christen Press performed her first sport in additional than two years on Thursday, showing instead in Angel City FC‘s shootout victory over San Diego Wave FC.
Press got here on within the 88th minute of Angel Metropolis’s win on penalty kicks within the NWSL x LIGA MX Femenil Summer season Cup match, and he or she was greeted with an ovation from the group at Titan Stadium in Fullerton, California. Press transformed a penalty kick within the shootout after the groups went scoreless in regulation time.
“It was positively a nostalgic feeling. Once you get to play a soccer sport, it is a miracle,” Press informed CBS Sports activities Community after the competition. “I used to be so excited, I used to be very nervous. I felt the love and help from this wonderful soccer neighborhood that was right here tonight.”
Could not have written it any higher.
Christen Press scores on a penalty in her first match again! pic.twitter.com/KeIKo9QAbQ
— Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League (@NWSL) August 2, 2024
She final performed on June 11, 2022, when she tore her proper ACL in a Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League match. She has undergone 4 knee surgical procedures since. She missed the whole lot of 2023, together with the World Cup.
The 35-year-old Southern California native was Angel Metropolis’s first signing because the group put collectively its roster forward of its 2022 NWSL growth season. She has scored 50 targets throughout all competitions in 101 NWSL video games.
Press was a member of the nationwide group that gained the World Cup in 2015 and 2019 and took house an Olympic bronze medal in 2021. She scored the opening purpose within the 2019 World Cup semifinal victory over England.
ESPN’s Jeff Kassouf contributed to this report.
