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Crystal Dunn is one of the most versatile players in American soccer history. Her career will, and should, be remembered as such.And yet, as I reflect on the legacy of the 33-year-old New Yorker, whose vast soccer intellect and abundance of fly dance moves saved her teams countless times, I find myself desperate to wedge some distance between Dunn and the word versatile.
It is, of course, a coveted quality in elite sports. The more weapons an athlete can pack in their arsenal, the more difficult it is to beat them. Versatility also widens the door of opportunity in modern soccer, where center backs are expected to capitalize on offensive set pieces, strikers to defend in a high press and fullbacks to be as technically flamboyant as wingers.
But in the context of Black athleticism and Black excellence, versatility carries a different connotation.
A Black soccer player’s athletic prowess, combined with a desire to get past doors that have historically and systemically been more narrow for them, can conceal an institution’s lack of planning or player development.
U.S. Soccer failed to develop high-caliber, left-footed fullbacks on the women’s side for years, and when the 2019 World Cup came around, they didn’t have one to call upon. But they did have Dunn, who could do it all, even when she didn’t necessarily want to.
As a field player, she found success in every region of the pitch throughout her decorated career. Classified as a midfielder at the University of North Carolina, Dunn was crowned ACC Defender of the Year as a freshman. In 2012, when the Tar Heels were in a pinch as a swath of its roster hobbled back from the U-20 and U-17 World Cups, former head coach Anson Dorrance deployed Dunn to the backline to soften the blow of his thin bench.
Dorrance told ESPN at the time that Dunn “corrected that immediately. But as you can (imagine), at a collegiate level, we waste her at the back. Why would you ever have a player with this extraordinary dribbling ability as your center back?”
In UNC’s quarterfinal against BYU that year, Dunn played the No. 10, scored the team’s only two goals in the game (including the extra time go-ahead), and preserved their lead with an end-line save off her head in their 2-1 victory. (Dunn’s height is somewhere between 5-foot-1 and 5-foot-2, depending on who you ask.) North Carolina went on to win the NCAA championship that year, and Dunn earned the Mac Hermann trophy, awarded to the top college soccer player.
Even then, Dunn was playing out of her preferred role.
“If I had to choose a position, I would definitely choose an outside mid position,” Dunn said back then in the same ESPN story. “I like freedom, and I like to take players on. For me, it fits my personality better because, as an outside mid, you have to worry about attacking and defending as a whole. For me, it’s my comfort zone.”
Freedom, comfort, time, and space are luxuries seldom afforded Black people — let alone Black athletes, let alone Black American soccer players. Dunn has been clear about what she wanted for more than a decade. As we celebrate her retirement, we must also consider what the game may have lost because she wasn’t always listened to — and what she still managed to accomplish despite that.
When Dunn went pro in 2014, she needed just one season in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) to earn both the Golden Boot and MVP awards. Her 15 goals in 20 regular-season games with the Washington Spirit set a league record at the time, as did the age at which she achieved the feat (23). Yet when then-U.S. women’s national team head coach Jill Ellis named her roster for the 2015 World Cup in April of that year, Dunn was not on it. She was the last player to be cut.
The most valuable player in the premier women’s professional soccer league in the U.S. did not represent her country at that year’s World Cup. That the USWNT won that World Cup campaign is beside the point; an omission like that would simply be unfathomable today. Dunn’s brilliance outpaced U.S. Soccer’s imagination.
Dunn relocated from the NWSL to the WSL in 2017, joining Chelsea. Emma Hayes, five years into her more than a decade with the club, employed Dunn as a left back. Dunn then returned to the NWSL and her comfort zone at midfield with the NC Courage, winning back-to-back shields and championships with them in 2018 and 2019.
Dunn’s star shone too brightly to be overlooked, yet her status on the USWNT was essentially set as a defender.
The 2019 World Cup was a watershed moment in equality for women’s soccer as the U.S. women were locked in a legal battle with U.S. Soccer over equal pay during their campaign and still managed to win a fourth title.
From a sporting perspective, however, Dunn was arguably the most vital player on that roster. She played every minute of six of the USWNT’s seven matches in that tournament at left back and put on consistent game-saving performances, including a defensive masterclass against hosts France in the quarterfinal.
Back and forth she went over the next few years as a club midfielder and a national team fullback. She earned a bronze medal with the U.S. at the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and added one more NWSL Championship and shield each to her trophy case with the Portland Thorns in 2022; she subbed on in the final that November, six months after giving birth to her son Marcel.
“Crystal is so special to me. She is, in a lot of ways, like a big sister to me,” said Thorns and USWNT star Sophia Wilson. “I feel like she kind of took me under her wing early on and was someone that I connected with really well.”
After winning Olympic gold as one-third of the iconic “Triple Espresso” alongside Trinity Rodman and Mallory Swanson, Wilson took a year off from soccer to have a baby. She gave birth to her daughter, Gianna, last September, and in December Wilson agreed to a record-setting $1 million option year on her current contract to stay in Portland and play for the Thorns in 2026.
“I saw Crystal go through a lot of things. I saw her have a baby, go through that. I feel like I’ve known Marcel for his whole life, so she is one of the main reasons I knew that I could do the same thing. I could have a baby and come back and play because I saw Crystal do it, and she’s just such an inspiration.”
As the 2023 World Cup approached, the question of Dunn’s position on the USWNT naturally resurfaced. In a GQ profile published in February that year, she was open about the emotional toll of her predicament. At a national team camp held shortly after, she remained open about her commitment to transparency.
“It’s really important that I’m always going to be my most authentic self,” Dunn said from a national team camp mixed zone in Nashville. “It’s not a secret that I’ve always struggled with identity on the field. It’s not to say that I don’t tackle and embrace that challenge, but it’s not something that is necessarily easy, or something that I absolutely love at all times.”
Her transparency was as much an act of loyalty to her current self as it was a corrective to her younger self.
“I think when I was younger it was easier to say, ‘Oh I’m happy to always play wherever the coach needs me,’” she added. “I think I’ve embraced my role 100 percent on this team, always competing to be the absolute best outside back I can possibly be. But the reality is I almost sometimes feel like I’m a part-time outside back, and I think that it’s important that people know my story.”
Dunn’s accomplishments are all the more impressive considering the emotional fatigue she likely endured from not only working in less-than-ideal positions but excelling in them. It also begs the question of what might have been if she hadn’t had to endure so much.
Up until her move to Paris-Saint Germain, after her contract with Gotham FC ran short last year, Dunn seemed poised to remain a part of the USWNT project that had since been taken over by Hayes, with whom she already had a relationship from their Chelsea days. In 2024, she played a key role in the U.S.’s Olympic success; Dunn played all but 75 minutes of the tournament. She continued to receive national team call-ups after that, the last being in May 2025 for friendlies against China and Jamaica.
“I was shocked to hear the news,” Washington Spirit and USWNT midfielder Croix Bethune told Soccer Girl Probs in reaction to the announcement. “Like, OK, you’re an OG, but, like, girl. You still got it.”
Bethune said she grew closer to Dunn at the 2024 Summer Olympics and valued being able to have “a couple of serious conversations with her just to, like, pick her brain and let her get to know me as well,” in addition to the lighter, goofier moments. “Her retiring, I just feel like isn’t right,” Bethune added.
And then there’s the word that’s impossible to overlook in Dunn’s retirement announcement posted on Instagram last week.
“This decision has not come easily, but I am at peace and deeply fulfilled with all that I have accomplished,” she wrote. “I’ve achieved nearly everything I dreamed of in this sport and gave all I had to give.”
Nearly. It does not negate her plans to spend more time with her family and be a more present mom, as she also wrote, but it also suggests that she is leaving the pitch with unfinished business.
That reality is not unique to the arc of an athlete’s career; rarely is there ever a right or satisfying time to retire, but Dunn’s contract with PSG was set to run through 2027. The question of how close she was to achieving that “nearly” will linger forever, and for a player of Dunn’s expansive skillset, that feels tragic.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
US Women's national team, Portland Thorns, North Carolina Courage, Washington Spirit, NWSL, Women's Soccer
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