International competition awaits several stars of KC’s new women’s pro soccer team
Walking into her first team meeting in over a year, Desiree Scott couldn’t hold back her tears.
The 33-year-old professional soccer player missed the 2020 NWSL Challenge Cup because of family issues and was also unavailable for the Fall Series later in the year. As Scott walked into a Canadian Women’s National Team meeting ahead of the 2021 SheBelieves Cup, emotion took over.
“I just kind of got teary-eyed because I’ve really missed being in the environment and that team aspect of things,” she said Friday.
Scott, a midfielder for Kansas City’s new National Women’s Soccer League team, was named to the Canadian roster for the SheBelieves Cup in late January and met up with her Canadian teammates in Orlando this week.
Scott isn’t the only KC NWSL player who will participate in the SheBelieves Cup. KC teammate Diana Matheson joins her on the Canadian roster and new signing Mariana Larroquette will play for her native Argentina.
Kansas City coach Huw Williams said Thursday that KC’s 2021 second-round draft pick, Victoria Pickett, has earned her own call-up from Canada and attended the squad’s camp in Orlando this week. The Canadian Soccer Federation was expected to officially announce Pickett’s addition to the roster within 24 hours.
And defender Rachel Corsie was recently added to Scotland’s roster for the UEFA Euro Women’s 2022 qualifiers.
This strong core of international-level players indicates the talent level on board for a team that relocated to Utah in 2018 and recently re-generated in Kansas City under new ownership.
NWSL camps are underway now, the annual Challenge Cup starts in April and the league’s regular season begins in May.
“In terms of having those international stars on a new team, I think it helps to pull in and draw fans,” Scott said. “Hopefully, we can just sort of start new and fresh and build on the foundation that was there in KC, but then sort of evolve it.”
“We are a new team and there’s a lot of new players coming, as well, so hopefully old fans will come back and hopefully we’ll be able to draw some new ones with what we do in the 2021 season.”
Scott said the Canadian players have received packets containing details about each team they’ll face in the SheBelieves tournament — Canada opens against the U.S. on Feb. 18, Argentina Feb. 21 and Brazil Feb. 24.
Because Canada’s focus is currently on the U.S. matchup, Scott hasn’t had much time to read up on Argentina and Larroquette, her new teammate in KC. But she expects the forward to be “tricky and tough opposition.”
One player she does know about is long-time friend and teammate Matheson. The pair have played together on the national team for the past decade, and Matheson joined the Utah Royals in 2018, allowing her to play alongside Scott at the club level. Both women remained with the club when it ceased operations and all of its assets transferred to the new KC franchise.
The pair call themselves “Double D” in the midfield and hope to bring a winning synergy to Team Canada and then Kansas City.
“Diana is a strong-willed, tactically sound, technical player, and I think she’ll bring that fight into each and every game,” Scott said. “She loves to get forward in the attack and I’ll be her biggest hype woman behind her, making sure I get her the ball.”
“We’ve got that relationship on the field, where we know where each other is. We’re able to communicate to each other what we need, and that partnership has really grown over the years playing for club and country together.”