FIFA Women’s World Cup debutant Sophia Smith has no problem getting hyped up for a game — just do not expect her to recognize the music her millennial teammates are playing in the locker room.
The 22-year-old forward is among a small group of Gen Z talent on a US squad that spans some two decades, united in the goal of bringing home a third consecutive title when the tournament starts on July 20 in Australia and New Zealand.
“They’ll talk about the technology they had, like the CD,” said Smith, who has never used a CD player and was once subject to good-natured ribbing for failing to identify the music of 1990s rapper Tupac.
Photo: AFP
“Some of the songs they play, they’re all listening to, I have no idea what they are. They sound like my parents,” Smith said.
Building chemistry in a World Cup squad is no easy feat, as players who once regarded one another as club foes must bond as teammates in a span of a few weeks, forming a cohesive unit.
“We literally had players that played the night before against each other and then they traveled all day to come together and now all of a sudden to have to be in the same team,” coach Vlatko Andonovski said on Tuesday.
Among the defending champions, another potential hurdle exists: an age gap.
Veteran forward Megan Rapinoe turns 38 next month and finds herself on the same squad as 18-year-old Alyssa Thompson.
Thompson and 21-year-old forward Trinity Rodman count retired great Carli Lloyd’s goal from the halfway mark in the 2015 Women’s World Cup final as a pivotal memory from their childhoods.
Five of their teammates this year were on the team with Lloyd when it happened.
“I’m still cool and hip. You know, I try to tell my teammates that,” said 30-year-old veteran defender Crystal Dunn, who plans to take her son, Marcel, on the road when she competes at the tournament.
“I have a kid and all of a sudden people are like: ‘Oh did you hear about TikTok, Crystal?’” she said.
However, the US players said at a pretournament media event on Tuesday that there was nothing but love between the generations.
“I really connect with all my teammates,” Dunn said. “Just because we’re in different phases in our career doesn’t mean that, you know, we can’t find common ground.”
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