Who is Sophia Smith? Recapping the rapid rise of USWNT’s 2023 World Cup star (2025)

Sophia Smith introduced herself to the World Cup in style on Friday night, scoring two goals and adding an assist in the U.S. women’s national team’s 3-0 win over Vietnam.

Contributing to every one of your team’s goals is no small feat at the top level of international soccer, but that’s exactly the type of performance that fans of the U.S. and Smith’s club team, the Portland Thorns, have been getting accustomed to over the last few years.

The Athletic’s Meg Linehan summed it up in The Radar: “Don’t be surprised by Sophia Smith at the 2023 World Cup — she’s an elite finisher who can kill you with a smile and a shrug.”

Smith was drafted by Portland with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 NWSL Draft out of Stanford University, where she teamed up with fellow USWNT World Cup squad member Naomi Girma (and Caterina Macario, who was a near-lock to make this roster before being ruled out through injury).

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Smith became the first player born in the 2000s to receive a USWNT cap at the end of 2020 against the Netherlands, and 2021 turned into a solid first full season in NWSL, having scored seven goals in 24 appearances.

But it was in 2022 when Smith made the leap into the elite.

“I love to (take players on one-v-one),” Smith told The Athletic at the 2022 SheBelieves Cup, where she turned heads with a series of outstanding performances. “That’s, I think, the biggest part of my game, is getting the ball and taking players on. That’s what I pride myself in, it’s what I enjoy doing. Just kind of the risk part of it is exciting to me, and it’s fun, too. I mean, the feeling of getting by someone is the best feeling ever. So I think I embrace that, and I love it. And that’s why I really like playing wide. Because those opportunities present themselves a lot, especially against teams that give that to us.”

U.S. head coach Vlatko Andnovski said at the time that he could see her being effective at either wide position in a three-person front line, and evaluated her in camp at those positions. Indeed, Smith was asked to switch from the right to the left between the first two games of SheBelieves 2022, playing as a right winger against the Czech Republic, then a left winger against New Zealand, with Catarina Macario as the No. 9 both times.

Smith’s incredible rise continued in the 2022 NWSL season, which saw her become the youngest MVP in league history after scoring 17 goals in 23 appearances in all competitions, including the opening goal in the Thorns’ dominant win over the Kansas City Current in that year’s NWSL Championship.

“This was always a goal, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon,” Smith said of the MVP award. “My first season, it was just a matter of me getting a feel for the league. Obviously, it’s a very different environment, so I felt like I couldn’t fully find my place my first year. This year, everything just came together. I felt like I could just be Soph, play exactly how I wanted to play, and I had the most support around me. So it just feels like everything clicked this season.”

What is it to “be Soph?” The answer, or at least part of it, could be found in her celebration after scoring that Championship goal. If fans didn’t think she’d arrived before, she was telling them right then and there that she is here to chew bubblegum and score goals, and she was all out of bubblegum.

“There’s been, you know, a lot of people who don’t think that I deserved to win MVP. So that was a little bit of ‘that’s that’,” said Smith after the game when asked about the celebration.

Her 14 goals for the Thorns in the regular season were 27.5 percent of all Thorns’ goals scored, and her ability to shoot in volume and get those shots on target allowed the Thorns to really pressure other defenses and goals.

In early 2023, Smith was named the U.S. Soccer Female Athlete of the Year, becoming the first woman of color to win the award.

“All the forwards (on the USWNT), I think, are very capable of playing all three positions up top,” said Smith. “And I think that’s a good thing. And it makes (head coach) Vlatko Andonovski’s decision harder because he knows that he can start anyone anywhere, and he’s gonna get a player who embraces it and wants to do their best and in whatever position that they’re asked to play.”

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(Photo: Robin Alam/USSF/Getty Images )