Becky Sauerbrunn has been going through it.
The U.S. women’s national captain announced last week that she would not recover from a foot injury in time to make the World Cup roster, a devastating blow to player and team.
Sauerbrunn’s teammates reacted to the news on Wednesday after the 23-player roster was announced, and all four USWNT players who spoke to the press used the word “heartbroken” to describe the loss of the veteran center back.
Never one to shy away from her commitments, Sauerbrunn still fulfilled a scheduled appearance on the “Snacks” podcast with teammates Sam Mewis and Lynn Williams, and the defender opened up on how she’s been handling the disappointment of not playing in a fourth World Cup.
“It sucks, like, it’s such a bummer,” she said. “I really thought that I was going to get back in time. Had a setback, you know, we gave them timelines where I could feasibly have played minutes at the World Cup. But the variability of it was, they just didn’t want to have to deal with that.
“And you don’t want somebody, a center back in particular, that can only play 15 minutes later on in the tournament. So I totally understood. I kind of hoped I was going to squeak in maybe as just a presence, as a leader that could just keep the locker room hopefully in a really positive good vibe state.”
With her Portland Thorns teammates on a long road trip, Sauerbrunn said she’s been back in Portland spending time with the players who didn’t travel. After the news of her absence dropped, she and her teammates decided they needed to go out and blow off some steam.
“I’ve just been with the non-traveling crew and they’ve been unbelievable friends. We went out after the games this weekend for a few drinks and it was like, I needed the outlet, they needed the outlet,” Sauerbrunn said.
“Some random person came up to us at the bar and was like crying for me. So I was almost crying. And then we just wound up taking a couple shots of Jameson. So that’s basically what it’s been like.”
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