Defending champion USA without captain Sauerbrunn

Defending champions and top-seeded USA will be without captain Becky Sorbrunn at the Women’s Soccer World Cup (July 20).

Defending champions and top-seeded USA will be without captain Becky Sorbrunn at the Women’s Soccer World Cup (July 20).

The 38-year-old defender will miss the tour of Australia and New Zealand with a leg injury. This has been reported by several American media. Zorbrunn confirmed the decision on social networks. “Heartbroken doesn’t even describe the half of it,” he wrote on Instagram, “but how sports and life really are.”

Sauerbrunn suffered an injury in April and made a brief comeback in a Portland Thorns shirt in early June, but it was not enough for the World Cup. The U.S. is already without Mallory Swanson and Caterina Macario injured. US coach Vladko Antonovski is expected to announce his World Cup squad in the coming days.

Sauerbrunn has played more than 200 international matches, in 2015 and 2019 he won the World Cup with the United States, in 2012 he won Olympic gold with the team in London and in 2021 bronze in Tokyo. He has been playing in Portland since 2020. “I hoped, worked, and hoped to make it in time,” Sauerbrunn wrote. But ultimately there is no safe time for her comeback.