Catarina Macario and Mallory Swanson celebrate their long-awaited returns to the USWNT

When Catarina Macario finally took the field for Chelsea last month, it had been 641 days since the ACL injury that sidelined her for longer than anyone could have imagined.

If she takes the field on Saturday for the U.S. women in the SheBelieves Cup against Japan, it will be six days short of two full years since her last national team game — at Subaru Park, coincidentally, on April 12, 2022.

The pain that the 24-year-old has endured since then, both physical and mental, seems nearly impossible to measure for an outsider. But as Macario returns to the public stage, she showed in a news conference on Wednesday that her personality remains as joyous as it was before.

“I just feel like I’ve been very, very blessed with all the people around me just showing so much support and love,” she said. “And not feeling rushed to come back, even though I could have had two children by now.”

That did not happen, to be clear, nor was it going to. But her laugh with those remarks counted as much as what she said a moment earlier: that her recovery “did take a lot longer than I expected, which was devastating.”

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We’ll see if her play is also as joyous when she takes the field on Saturday in Atlanta, where more than 45,000 fans are expected at the first game of a doubleheader with Brazil and Canada (12:30 p.m., TNT, Telemundo 62, Universo, Max, Peacock). If her seven games with Chelsea so far are an indication, there’s even more reason for optimism.

“It just really felt like a dream, it felt surreal,” Macario said. “Looking back on the 641 days that it took, it just kind of all happened in the blink of an eye, if that makes sense. I was like, ‘Oh, OK, so we’re playing now.’”

But it wasn’t easy.

“I felt like crying, but at the same time, not, because — well, first of all, I’m in public, and I hate crying in public,” she said. “There were so many emotions there, that I obviously knew that I had been working toward that for a while. But I think probably the biggest thing was just getting over that mental hurdle that was like, ‘OK, I’m safe, I’m good to play again. I got this.’”

Remarkably, Macario scored just seven minutes into her first game, having entered as a second-half substitute vs. Leicester City on March 3. Leicester isn’t the toughest opposition, but the goal lit up social media on both sides of the Atlantic.

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“To have scored, I was not expecting that at all,” she said. “I was just kind of like, ‘Well, I’m just happy to be on the pitch again, and, to be with my teammates. And then when that happens, I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, this is fun.’”

Mallory Swanson had to go through not just one, but two surgeries to repair the torn patella tendon she suffered last April. She was healthy enough in January to join the Americans’ pre-Gold Cup training camp, but this is her first time on an official squad.

“Looking back at it, I’m very thankful for how everything worked out, because ultimately I learned a lot about life,” the 25-year-old Chicago Red Stars winger said.

“I’ve never gone through something like what I went through,” Swanson continued. “I think it gave me some time to just evaluate myself, evaluate my life, and also kind of take a step back and enjoy, honestly, being with my husband [Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson] in Chicago. And so yeah, I think ultimately, it worked out how it was supposed to be.”

Of course, ideally she would have been at last year’s World Cup, and Macario, too. We’ll never know just how much their absences would have saved a U.S. attack that was designed for the two of them to lead.

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“One thing that I learned throughout my injury was the you can’t ever take life for granted, you can’t take your health for granted,” Swanson said. “When something’s taken away from you, you always have a new perspective on it. So I’m very, just, grateful to be back in this environment, back with this team, and wearing the crest, because it means so much.”

At the start of Wednesday’s gathering, U.S. captain Lindsey Horan and star striker Alex Morgan addressed a recent controversy over midfielder Korbin Albert.

Fans who follow Albert on social media noticed that she had posted, shared, and liked homophobic and transphobic content, including an item seemingly celebrating Megan Rapinoe’s injury in last year’s NWSL title game — the last game of her career.

As the outrage grew, Rapinoe — who wore the No. 15 jersey with the U.S. that Albert now has — published a statement that implicitly criticized Albert. Soon after that, Albert issued an apology and a promise to change her ways. She has not commented further since.

“Al and I, we just want to address the disappointing situation regarding Korbin that has unfolded over this past week,” Horan said, speaking first. “We’ve worked extremely hard to uphold the integrity of this national team through all of the generations, and we are extremely, extremely sad that this standard was not upheld. Our fans and our supporters feel like this is a team that they can rally behind, and it’s so important that they feel, and continue to feel, undeniably heard and seen.”

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Morgan spoke after that.

“We stand by maintaining a safe and respectful space, especially as allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, and this platform has given us an opportunity to highlight causes that matter to us — something that we never take for granted,” she said. “And we’ll keep using this platform to give attention to causes that are important to us.”

Morgan then concluded: “It’s also important to note we’ve had internal discussions around the situation and that will stay within the team. But one thing also to note is that we have never shied away from hard conversations within this team.”