Angel City defender Merritt Mathias, who was one of 11 active players to have played in the National Women’s Soccer League for its entire 12-year history, announced her retirement this week.
Mathias, 34, is a three-time winner of both the NWSL championship and the Supporters’ Shield.
She spent the past two seasons with Angel City, which acquired her in a 2022 trade with the North Carolina Courage. Mathias missed the 2023 season because of a knee injury.
“I didn’t go into my 12th year believing it would be my last,” Mathias said in a statement. “But as the season went on, I’ve struggled a lot with illness and injury. That’s part of sport, and I’ve come back from injuries before, but with my diagnosis (of type 2 diabetes), it takes longer for my body to heal in the way that it needs to. I do not want to continue to do the thing that I love and only get to do it a minimal amount of time because the rest of my time is spent rehabbing or coming back from something.
“I’ve had to reflect on what I’ve done and where I am, and I sit here today incredibly proud of what I’ve done,” she continued. “I love that I get to retire the way that I am.”
Mathias will play her retirement match on Sunday when Angel City hosts the Utah Royals.
Mathias has played 434 minutes and earned one assist in 14 matches (all competitions) for Angel City. For her 12-year career, she has 10 goals, 19 assists and 14,382 minutes played in 196 NWSL regular-season matches (166 starts).
A former standout at North Carolina and Texas A&M, Mathias began her NWSL career with FC Kansas City (2013-14), capturing a league title in 2014, and later played for the Seattle Reign (2015-17), winning the Shield in 2015.
The Courage won back-to-back Shield and league titles in 2018-19, and she was NWSL Second XI in 2018.
“I’m ready to go and make my name doing something else or doing something within this league,” said Mathias, a native of Birmingham, Ala. “I want to be in the rooms where decisions are made. I want to be the one that drives this league in a direction that I believe it should go in.”
–Field Level Media