Ted Lasso offers Cal alum Alex Morgan celebration moves while announcing USWNT Olympic Roster
Morgan was officially named to her 3rd Olympic Games on Wednesday
With the extra year to return to form after giving birth to her first child early in 2020, Cal Women’s Soccer alum Alex Morgan was a lock to make the “2020 Tokyo Olympic” roster.
USWNT got Ted Lasso and Coach Beard to make the official announcement of the roster. Check out the announcement in the embedded Tweet below. Alex Morgan was the very last of the 18 players named. She got a special shoutout for her goal celebration a month ago, emulating the football legend that is Coach Lasso himself (more on this below). Lasso and Beard even tried to come up with a few more goal celebration moves for the Cal Golden Bear legend.
Okay, so they just came up with some old dance moves rather than anything too special, but it was still neat to see the online interactions between them. With Ted Lasso season 2 likely finished filming, maybe Alex Morgan can make a cameo for season 3.
Including Morgan, six of the 18 players on USWNT came from the Pac-12. Stanford got three players: Kelly O’Hara, Christen Press, and Tierna Davidson. UCLA got two in Sam Mewis and Abby Dahlkemper. Two of the four reserve players, goalkeeper Jane Campbell and midfielder Catarina Macario, who gave up her senior year this past pandemic year to go play for Olympique Lyonnais, are also Stanford Cardinals.
The USWNT head coach Vlatko Andonovski went with experience for his Tokyo Olympic roster. Both Carli Lloyd (Rutgers alum) and Megan Rapinoe (Portland alum) were on the bubble until some strong play in the last set of friendlies. Rapinoe’s presence might mean that she will again be the go-to penalty taker over Alex Morgan.
USWNT will attempt to be the women’s side to both. win the World Cup and the Olympics (which is considered of similar status since there is no age limit on the women’s side unlike for Olympic men’s soccer). Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic meant that USWNT had an extra year to recover but also age since their 2019 Women’s World Cup triumph.
In Group play, Team USA will face off against nemesis Sweden (July 21st), New Zealand (July 24th), and Australia (July 27th). Sweden eliminated the United States in the quarterfinal round via PK’s at the 2016 Rio Olympics. While New Zealand National Team, AKA “Football Ferns”, has yet to officially announce its roster of 18 active players, Cal alumni Betsy Hassett and Daisy Cleverly were on the New Zealand national team for the last Women’s World Cup. Hassett has already been a 2x “Calympian” while Cleverly is still hoping to be a first-time Olympian. The two New Zealand midfielders would be the only other potential “Calympians” in Women’s Soccer for the Tokyo Games in addition to Alex Morgan.
In Case You Missed It, Alex Morgan paid homage to Ted Lasso with a recent NWSL goal celebration.
That little dance was inspired by something from the show. To be honest, as a fan of Ted Lasso and having watched the first season twice, I would not have formed that connection had Alex Morgan did not spell that out.
Ted Lasso responded
That exchange was perhaps the catalyst that turned into Ted Lasso announcing the team roster.
GO BEARS!