Becky Sauerbrunn interview: USWNT captain misses World Cup - ESPN

There are captains, and then there is Becky Sauerbrunn.

The U.S. women's national team defender is, as several teammates have described her over the past couple of years, the team's «moral compass.» She is the liaison between head coach Vlatko Andonovski and a team of young players who mostly were not around for the past two World Cup triumphs, each of which featured Sauerbrunn anchoring the back line.

Becky Sauerbrunn is irreplaceable for the USWNT as a leader on and off the field. And yet, Sauerbrunn will not be at the 2023 World Cup, confirming Friday that she will miss out on a fourth World Cup and a shot at a third title due to injury.

It's worth noting this wasn't a new injury. Sauerbrunn missed all of May with a foot injury, returning to action for her club, Portland Thorns FC, for 24 minutes off the bench on June 3 in a victory over rival OL Reign. That brief appearance caused a significant setback, sources tell ESPN — significant enough that even the month remaining before the U.S. opens its campaign, it was deemed insufficient for her to heal.

«Heartbroken isn't even the half of it,» Sauerbrunn said in a statement posted to her social media accounts late Friday.

On the field, Sauerbrunn leaves a void in a position lacking both depth and experience.

For the past year, Andonovski had settled on a rotation of three primary center backs: Sauerbrunn, Alana Cook and Naomi Girma. Cook and Girma are promising young talents, but between them they have just 39 international caps. Sauerbrunn has 216 caps. She was the only carryover on the back line from the USWNT's 2015 World Cup win to the 2019 repeat win. Her performance in 2015, when the U.S. tied a World Cup record for consecutive shutout minutes, cemented her as one