Ali Krieger might not be walking away from soccer completely.
The two-time World Cup champion ended her professional soccer career by winning the the 2023 NWSL Championship with Gotham FC. Now she’s plotting her next chapter.
Speaking on CBS Sports’ “We Need To Talk,” Krieger, 39, said that she might find herself back on the field someday, but on the sidelines. She has her U.S. Soccer B License, with the coaching course paid by the NWSL.
“We want to get more female coaches into the professional game and the college game,” Krieger said. “I’m open to [coaching]. I feel like I’m a little too nice. I wouldn’t be able to look at players and tell them why they’re not starting, all the difficult conversations I think I would struggle with at the beginning and maybe I would get better at it.
“But I can be very demanding and supportive, and I think that’s what a lot of players and teams need. Because you know how players can be so good and that’s why you can demand more from them. But also be super supportive, because they need to feel confident. They need to feel like they can just go and express themselves and really get the best out of them. And so I try to do both of those. But I could see myself being maybe an assistant or a specific defensive coach, because I love defending so much.”
Still, Krieger is “ready for anything” in retirement and is excited to move on to the next chapter of her life, especially considering that she’s going out as a champion. And Gotham players have been partying so hard, she said, that they already chipped the brand-new championship trophy.
“The world is my oyster now,” she said. “This has been such an incredible ride this year and then to end this weekend – I’m still processing it in real time. … This is something I’ve been trying to work towards for so long, 11 years that we’ve had this league I had yet to win and then it happened this weekend.”
While she could have played for a little while longer, Krieger is starting to feel it in her back a little bit, she said. And she wants to spend more time with her kids.
“Back-to-back champions might be kinda nice too but I think, honestly, this is such an amazing way for me to go out,” she said. “An incredible game, an incredible year that we had and I think I wanna end up on top.”