Ali Riley is about as American as you can get.
Born in Los Angeles. Product of the Southern California
girls soccer scene. Star at Stanford University. WPS Rookie of the Year with FC Gold Pride. Best XI selection in her two seasons in WPS.
ALI
RILEY: Country: New Zealand
Age: 27.
Position: Defender
Club: FC Rosengard
Twitter: @rileythree With speed,
tenacity and durability, she is one of the best left backs in the world but she doesn't play for the United States, which is ironic because left back is a position the U.S. women have struggled to
fill.
While Stanford grads like
Christen Press and
Kelley O'Hara will play for the USA (and fellow
Americans
Teresa Noyola and
Alina Garciamendez will represent Mexico) at the Women's World Cup, Riley will represent New
Zealand.
And while Press and O'Hara play in the NWSL on contracts subsidized by U.S. Soccer, Riley has played in Sweden since the collapse of WPS after the 2011 season.
Riley was something of a late bloomer and never got picked for any U.S. youth teams, so she joined the the Football Ferns for whom she qualified as the daughter of a New Zealander.
Twenty for Canada 2015: 1.
Veronica
Boquete
2.
Lara Dickenmann 3.
Wendie Renard 4.
Samantha Kerr 5.
Ji So-Yun 6.
Eugenie Le Sommer 7.
Marta 8.
Dzsenifer Marozsan 9.
Vivianne Miedema
10.
Aya Miyama
11.
Asisat Oshoala 12.
Lianne Sanderson 13.
Louisa Necib She missed out on a chance to play for the USA, but at the age of 27,
she's had plenty of opportunities to participate on the international stage. She's already played in two Women's World Cups and two Olympics.
“There’s no point in dwelling on
the past, on what could have been," she
told ESPN.com during her Rookie of the Year season
with FC Gold Pride. "I’m so thankful I’ve played in a World Cup and Olympics, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”