“Kick Off” by Hamish Bowles, was originally published in the April 2016 issue of Vogue.
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“I was the ultimate tomboy,” says women’s-soccer supernova Alex Morgan, remembering her childhood self. “I’m supercompetitive. I wanted to beat the boys at everything, I wanted to be faster; I wanted to be stronger.”
I, on the other hand, was the ultimate sissy. “He’s got footballer’s knees!” exulted my father at the very moment of my first appearance in this world. Unfortunately for him, I showed no interest whatsoever in the Beautiful Game. I don’t remember anyone ever teaching me how to play; in England it was simply assumed that every boy would understand the rudiments of the sport. (Girls weren’t part of the equation at that time: They had netball, rounders, and hockey to keep them occupied.)
In a doomed attempt to hook me in, Dad took me, aged ten, to watch his beloved local team, Hendon, play in the Amateur Cup semifinal. I vividly recall my father’s disquieting transformation from mild-mannered accountant to Tasmanian Devil, hurling invective, forbidden swear words, and spittle at the hapless players below. Not long after, Dad had to bribe me to attend a white hot–ticket Liverpool vs. Chelsea match with the promise of a trip to the antiques market of Portobello Road the following morning.
In 1999, when Morgan was ten, the U.S. Women’s National soccer team, led by Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Michelle Akers, won the FIFA Women’s World Cup, 5–4, against China. From that point on, she was hooked. At sixteen, already a star on her Diamond Bar, California, high school soccer team, she felt that her childhood dream of making it as a professional player was an achievable goal.
My achievable soccer goal, meanwhile, was to continue avoiding the ball at all costs. In my first term at high school I was inexplicably picked for the first eleven—the elite soccer team—presumably because I could run fast. I briefly served as goalkeeper, a role in which I displayed astonishing thespian, if not athletic, skills as I pretended to miss the ball by inches as it pelted toward me at breakneck speed. Mostly, though, I just loitered about on the outskirts of the field with my best friend, gossiping away and admiring our imaginary nail varnish as the ball and the rest of the players went whizzing past. Never, then, in my wildest teen dreams did I expect that one day I would be gossiping away and having my nails done alongside one of the most admired and lauded soccer players in America.
Morgan is understandably dumbfounded by the pitiful trajectory of my soccer odyssey, with its pattern of resistance to the sexist norm. “It’s almost the complete opposite for women soccer players,” the 26-year-old explains. “We’re dying to play and people are telling us, ‘You can’t play.’ I almost wish I’d been forced into it, instead of my having to fight for it!”
I confide in Morgan that I am being forced into the sport again now, for the first time since those early teenage mortifications. The assignment would be tolerable were it not for the childhood traumas keeping me awake at night. But if England’s Sir Stanley Matthews, a mid-century star revered by Dad for his dribbling skills, was still playing at 50, the least I could do was give it a go.
My friend Simon Doonan was able to provide further reassurance: He is currently writing a book about soccer through the lens of fashion and style, a project that I am at least half-interested in. “There’s nothing I don’t know about George Best’s cleats,” Doonan told me over our pep-talk lunch.
