“Whenever you get to win, you feel the satisfaction of all of your hard work, all the sacrifices, all the blood, sweat and tears. It feels right and makes you realise that you are really doing the right thing.”
― Abby Wambach
“I think there’s so much emphasis on body image and results and outcome, but really what you should be after is to be healthy and to feel good about yourself.”
― Abby Wambach
“The truth is, I’ve been on a team my whole life. I’m the youngest of 7, so I’ve been training to be an athlete my whole life.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’m a pretty decent cook. I like to grill. I have a smoker that I love. I love me some steak. And I’ll make a huge salad with a ton of vegetables.”
― Abby Wambach
“Having different people come together and be on a team and win a world championship is literally, I think, the definition of being American.”
― Abby Wambach
“When you’re a pro athlete, life is very narcissistic – everything relates back to you and how you play. When you are getting out of pro sports, you suddenly have to get a little more mindful of what’s going on around you and how you affect the rest of the world.”
― Abby Wambach
“At the most elite level, your nutrition becomes a lifestyle: it’s not something you have to do when you’re preparing for Olympic games or World Cup games – you just do it. You’re more inclined to eat healthier because it’s better for your muscles.”
― Abby Wambach
“The most important thing is that sometimes you have to go through hard times to get to the good stuff.”
― Abby Wambach
“My nephew has type 1 diabetes, and it’s my goal and hope that in his lifetime there will be a cure for diabetes. There’s no place better to give the money to than the Juvenile Diabetes Association.”
― Abby Wambach
“It’s a heavy burden to look up at the mountain and want to start the climb.”
― Abby Wambach
“Sometimes there has to be a goat on some level, and I’m totally fine with that being me.”
― Abby Wambach
“Any good attacker will always beat a defender who’s face-marking you.”
― Abby Wambach
“This might sound masochistic or narcissistic, I don’t know, but when I’m not playing the game, the validations I feel about life are always through the hardships. I relate more to sadness, in a lot of ways, when I’m not playing.”
― Abby Wambach
“Sometimes when you fail, it allows you the opportunity to grow more motivation and get more intense about your training.”
― Abby Wambach
“When you’re younger and traveling and visiting new countries and cities, that stuff is exciting; it’s flashy, it’s shiny, but I always had this separation between who I was as a person and who I was as a player.”
― Abby Wambach
“Forever, it was just soccer – passion, life, love. Then I got married, and I had to transfer some of my energy. I want to be my best for my country, but I also made a really big promise and choice to be the best in my marriage. That has not always been the easiest thing to manage.”
― Abby Wambach
“I would say Hope Solo is competitive.”
― Abby Wambach
“The minute you step off that podium is the minute you start preparing for the next world championship. That’s kind of how I work. You celebrate for a brief moment, then you move on.”
― Abby Wambach
“Your heart can only take you so far – sometimes the physical body tells you otherwise.”
― Abby Wambach
“My teammates have put me in all different kinds of positions to score goals, and I can’t say it enough, and I really through and through believe it in my heart that I’m only as good as my teammates allow me to be.”
― Abby Wambach
“I always think that struggle can bring out the best in people – or the worst.”
― Abby Wambach
“I want to reduce my risks as much as possible and hopefully be able to go to the World Cup fit, ready and healthy.”
― Abby Wambach
“For any athlete growing up, the Olympics is the one thing you watch with your family, and it’s the one thing you dream about. Seeing your country’s flag go up as you get a gold medal is the best thing you can achieve.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’ve always had a dream of owning a restaurant.”
― Abby Wambach
“To win a championship, you have to have a little bit of luck on your side.”
― Abby Wambach
“I think that in order to get better as an athlete and to see whatever kind of results you’re after, you have to make goals. Whether you write them down or tell someone about them, it’s important to set goals for yourself in order to achieve any kind of success.”
― Abby Wambach
“When I was really young, the women’s national team wasn’t on a grand media stage, so my role models were male basketball and male American football players.”
― Abby Wambach
“I am going to change the world, and I’m talking to everybody in the possible world that I can get to that can help me to do that.”
― Abby Wambach
“Considering retirement is like skirting with the reality of what’s to come, and I think that’s why so many athletes decide to do more introspection at that point.”
― Abby Wambach
“You can’t cry when things get a little bit hard. You’ve just got to push through and know that there’s a reason and end to the means.”
― Abby Wambach
“My eldest sister Beth is a doctor who studied at Harvard and Columbia and played basketball for Harvard. She set the athletic and academic standard for the rest of us to follow.”
― Abby Wambach
“My go-to karaoke? ‘Alone’ by Celine Dion.”
― Abby Wambach
“Winning, you can overlook so many things.”
― Abby Wambach
“When you can score three goals without the most prolific scorer in the world, you know you have a lot of depth, and it gives you confidence.”
― Abby Wambach
“The most important thing is to get better at your craft, and concussions and head impacts are a setback.”
― Abby Wambach
“I want to do what I can to give the next generation of athletes added advantages in the game.”
― Abby Wambach
“I think, as you grow older, you have figure out the best way to utilize not only your body but your skill.”
― Abby Wambach
“When I was in college, I learned to really take care of my body and figured out what works best for me and what doesn’t work for me when it comes to my nutrition. That helped so much on the field because soccer is such a fitness-oriented game.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’m pretty goofy. I laugh at my own jokes.”
― Abby Wambach
“You know me, I’m not that kind of person that cares to unveil all of my personal things to the world because frankly, in terms of my soccer, it doesn’t matter.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’m not in the business of politics.”
― Abby Wambach
“If I can help a kid feel more comfortable in their skin because they’re struggling with maybe the things I struggled with in high school, that’s great.”
― Abby Wambach
“I know that I’ll end up being a role model for many, many people out there for all kinds of reasons.”
― Abby Wambach
“I can’t speak for other people, but for me, I feel like gone are the days that you need to come out of a closet. I never felt like I was in a closet. I never did. I always felt comfortable with who I am and the decisions I made.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’m honestly not the kind of person who wants to step up to a podium, test the microphone and be like, ‘Hey, I’m homosexual and this is who I am, hear me roar.’ That’s not who I am.”
― Abby Wambach
“A few goals is the way soccer is meant to be played.”
― Abby Wambach
“My parents, they’re the kind of people that didn’t want me to get a big head, so they just kept challenging me and challenging me.”
― Abby Wambach
“As soon as I started to realize that I could make a living playing professional soccer, I went to that place where I could torture myself because I knew it would make me better for the championship game.”
― Abby Wambach
“I know that I was put on this planet to be an athlete.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’ve always been motivated more by negative comments than by positive ones. I know what I do well. Tell me what I don’t do well.”
― Abby Wambach
“People don’t think an athlete nowadays can have a team-first mentality and I do.”
― Abby Wambach
“As an athlete, you are literally programmed to endure a specific amount of pain.”
― Abby Wambach
“I haven’t won a World Cup. There’s things that haven’t been finished, and I’m not afraid to fall flat on my face trying.”
― Abby Wambach
“My sole focus is to help bring a World Cup back to the U.S.”
― Abby Wambach
“2014 was physically a tough year because I injured my knee, and you know how that goes with your emotions and the mentality.”
― Abby Wambach
“There are standards of the game that FIFA governs and promises to uphold.”
― Abby Wambach
“I think making the referee aware of a situation, there is nothing wrong with that.”
― Abby Wambach
“From a pretty early age, my mother realized that I was a little bit more gifted and talented than my own age group. So, she moved me over to play with the boys’ travel soccer team when I was about 11 years old.”
― Abby Wambach
“I really enjoy helping people out, and I enjoy time spent with kids.”
― Abby Wambach
“Nobody is offered a World Cup.”
― Abby Wambach
“During events like the World Cup and the Olympics, I tend to get really wrapped up in my own experience to stay focused, but it’s like a bubble. I don’t see much outside my own perspective.”
― Abby Wambach
“One thing I love to do when I’m working out is take my watch off, take my heart strap off, and just run – not for time, not for exertion, but just to get the blood flowing.”
― Abby Wambach
“As a competitor, I want to continue to keep turning the chapters and keep challenging myself.”
― Abby Wambach
“Sometimes if you have a coach or team-mates for too long, you get caught in certain routines. I think it’s good to shake up things a little bit.”
― Abby Wambach
“People don’t understand that the feel of the surface is so important for a footballer. The ball travels on the surface; our feet move on the surface – all of that goes into how the game is actually played.”
― Abby Wambach
“It’s always really challenging trying to go from player to player/coach. You have a kind of friendship basis of relationship with all of your teammates, and now you go to this power position where you have to make decisions that might hurt people’s feelings.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’m not sure if I’m going to get into coaching. I’m sure I’ll stay in soccer somehow.”
― Abby Wambach
“I have a unique ability to predict the flight of the ball, and my teammates have a unique ability to find me.”
― Abby Wambach
“Any little touch a defender can make on me when I’m in the air literally moves me. On the ground, I can use my muscle, but in the air, it’s harder to fight that off.”
― Abby Wambach
“I have never once dribbled the whole field and scored a goal by myself.”
― Abby Wambach
“When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a person who’s made the kind of impact that Mia Hamm made on the game. She’s still my idol, the greatest player and the greatest teammate. She achieved so much in so many different ways. What she did for women’s soccer can’t be measured.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’m not spending every second thinking about the World Cup, but it’s always in my mind when I make choices and decisions.”
― Abby Wambach
“If you break an individual record, it’s because of the greatness that comes before you.”
― Abby Wambach
“I would trade all the individual awards I’ve won for a World Cup.”
― Abby Wambach
“I don’t care how many championships you’ve won or how many records you’ve broken – if you’ve had a hand in pushing forward not only a game but women in sport’s movement, then I think that’s pretty darn good.”
― Abby Wambach
“I would love to be a mum if I’m blessed to have children. My wife and I have those plans.”
― Abby Wambach
“The growth of women’s soccer and women’s sports all around the world has been slow.”
― Abby Wambach
“I hope we can get to a point where women players are being paid properly all around the world so the only thing they have to worry about is playing football and playing football alone.”
― Abby Wambach
“I am not a politician by nature, but I will say I think there need to be more women in FIFA, and I would be open to having those conversations when the time is right.”
― Abby Wambach
“As professional soccer players, we take our bodies to the extreme. We’re the people at the gym that look like we’re breaking the machines. Pushing our bodies to the limits is what makes us so strong and capable and Olympians. It’s not an easy thing to consistently do over and over again to your body.”
― Abby Wambach
“Soccer players generally burn through all of their carbohydrate stores by halftime, so how are you going to replace those? That’s what we do at halftime.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’m going to do anything I can do – whether that’s being part of FIFA or creating some sort of movement that can actually impart real equality across all lines – in every country, every city, every sector all over the world, that’s what I’m going to do.”
― Abby Wambach
“We need to have women in more powerful positions that are making decisions, so when that 10-year-old girl is looking up and wondering, ‘What can I do and what do I want to be when I get older?’ She has the opportunity to do and be whatever she wants.”
― Abby Wambach
“I don’t know if I found soccer or if soccer found me. Especially because when I was younger, I was doing it, in a lot of ways, because I wanted the attention of my mom and dad.”
― Abby Wambach
“I always wanted to be more validated as a human being, as a person, than I was as a player. I think that was a really hard balance for me.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’m fiercely patriotic, and the flag and the anthem is something that I really, really respect.”
― Abby Wambach
“It feels a little bit odd to me that you have some guys that have never lived in the United States that play for the United States because they were able to secure a passport. To me, that just feels like they weren’t able to make it for their country and earn a living, so they’re coming here.”
― Abby Wambach
“I want my legacy to be about the soccer, and if I can help people be happier in life in any capacity, awesome.”
― Abby Wambach
“I think I take on a little more responsibility when push comes to shove. I’m not scared to fail.”
― Abby Wambach
“International friendlies, they mean something, but what you want is to play on the biggest stage, play under the lights.”
― Abby Wambach
“I’ll be honest. After I got married, I definitely had a shift in emotional devotion.”
― Abby Wambach
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