Mallory Swanson Is Doing the Best She Can While the USWNT Struggles Without Her

The star forward was supposed to be the face of the Women’s World Cup before an injury in an April friendly forced her to watch from home.

NEW YORK — Mallory Swanson isn’t supposed to be here, and as recently as a few weeks ago, she thought she wouldn’t be. Immediately after she tore her left patellar tendon in an April friendly against Ireland, she told herself she would find a way to defy expectations. Recovery from an injury like hers generally takes about six months. The Women’s World Cup started in three.

“I was like, I'm gonna be there,” she says. “Like, I might not be 90 minutes fit, but I'm gonna be there.”

It took until late June for her to hear what her body had been telling her: No.

So while the rest of the U.S. women’s national team fights for its third straight World Cup, its best player is posing for pictures at an event space in Chelsea, taking a break from a five-days-a-week rehab schedule to make an appearance on behalf of Frito-Lay and its Cracker Jill ad campaign that highlights eight elite athletes. This was not the setup either party imagined when they signed her endorsement deal early this year—she was supposed to be the face of the World Cup—but they are trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Before her injury, Swanson scored seven goals in six games in 2023.  :: Albert Pena/IMAGO

On this day in late July, she meets the finalists for the Cracker Jill campaign. She smiles for dozens of photos with youth soccer players and autographs everything from miniature soccer balls to a tiny pink Croc. Now she is seated in a back room with three publicists. “It’s been cool for me to still be a part of something,” she says.

She is not a part of the national team in the way she would like to be. She and captain Becky Sauerbrunn, out with a foot injury, texted the group before the tournament started, but the only way the 26-year-old Swanson can endure this stretch emotionally is by removing herself from it. She does not contact her teammates. She does not dissect substitutions or schematics. She follows the team, but not much more closely than your average U.S. fan. She focuses instead on her physical therapy, thinking about the next World Cup but also about the next hour. Her teammates know to the minute where they need to be; she is not entirely sure where we are in the calendar (“What month is it?”) nor when the games are (“3 a.m.?”).

She has never really been through something like this before. Her previous hardest moment came when she played poorly in 2021 and did not make the Olympic roster. She wallowed for about a day, then decided never to let that happen again. But this is different. She can’t will her way through it.

“I’m not a very patient person when it comes to things like this, so I’m just learning how to have patience with the process and myself,” she says.

She tries to take solace in having her summer back: She went to a friend’s wedding the same day the U.S. beat Vietnam; she traveled to London to watch her husband, Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson, play the Cardinals there in June. And she tries to celebrate the little wins: She was recently cleared to do a few touches. She boasts that her wide-leg jeans are not hiding a knee brace.

But she misses her teammates, and they miss her. The U.S. is in real danger of bowing out against Sweden on Saturday night (Sunday morning ET) in the round of 16, in large part because the Americans have struggled to finish. Coach Vlatko Andonovski had planned to run the offense through Swanson; instead he has mixed and matched, trying to patch together a scoring threat. He had expected Swanson, barely old enough to rent a car but in her eighth year on the senior national team, to serve as a leader; instead a group that has never really played together is struggling to find cohesion. Swanson is rooting for them. She says she believes they have what it takes.

If the U.S. makes the final, she says, she’ll fly to Australia for it. It won’t be the way she wanted. But she’ll be there.