How Lily Yohannes kept cool amid the hype before deciding to play for the USWNT

There have been young phenoms on the U.S. women’s soccer team before, going all the way back to a fresh-faced Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly in 1987. And there surely will be more in the future because that’s how the sport is.

Still, Lily Yohannes’ arrival feels different: not just from 15-year-old Hamm and 16-year-old Lilly, but 17-year-old Heather O’Reilly in 2002 and 18-year-olds Alyssa Thompson and Jaedyn Shaw last year.

Not because of her skill, though she has plenty of it — she wouldn’t be on the U.S. team otherwise. It’s the spotlight Yohannes has been in that makes the 17-year-old midfielder stand out.

Born in Virginia and living in the Netherlands with her family since age 10, Yohannes burst onto the scene just over a year ago with famed Amsterdam-based club Ajax. She had previously played for U.S. youth teams but was now on her new country’s radar, too.

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That led to a recruiting battle, the kind that the U.S. men’s team has long been used to but that the women’s team hadn’t seen much. Manager Emma Hayes and her interim predecessor, Twila Kilgore, were patient, knowing that if they pushed too hard, they might lose.

This past April, Yohannes accepted a senior U.S. call-up for the first time, and in early June she made her debut at age 16. Last month, she committed to the U.S. program, coincidentally just in time for the Americans to play the Netherlands in the Hague in their last game of the year on Tuesday (2:45 p.m., TNT, truTV, Universo).

Monday brought the latest rite of passage: her first news conference since committing. A Zoom event from camp drew a big crowd wanting to hear Yohannes tell her story for herself, which hasn’t happened much along the way.

“To be honest, I think I sort of just tried to block out all the outside noise,” she said. “I have a great support system around me with my family and my club. Obviously, I was asked the question a lot, but I didn’t really feel pressure or anything like that, so that was really nice.”

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What swayed the decision?

“My family and the people close to me have just said to me, ‘This is a big decision. You have to follow your heart and not feel pressured by any external factors,’” Yohannes said. “That’s what I did.”

The Dutch program made its efforts knowing that Yohannes didn’t have a passport yet, though she was in the process of getting one. Along the way, manager Andries Jonker said publicly on a few occasions that he thought his side would win out — and when it lost, he turned a bit sour.

“I read that she dreams of playing in an American shirt her whole life,” Jonker told reporters in the Netherlands. “She could have said that right away. It would have saved Nigel [de Jong, the Dutch federation’s technical director] a lot of work.”

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That wasn’t the first time Jonker’s mouth got ahead of him. It did at last year’s World Cup before his team faced the U.S., and it did earlier this year when he twice said Yohannes “had indicated she would like to play for the Netherlands.”

Now the book is closed, though it might have been slammed on a table somewhere in Amsterdam afterward.

“I think she should do what she wants to do,” Jonker said of Yohannes’ decision. “If that’s her dream, she should pursue it and live it. I don’t want a player who would rather play in another shirt.”

When Yohannes’ turn came Monday, she was more diplomatic.

“I was given space from both federations, just giving me my opportunity to make a decision,” she said. “I think being involved with the full [U.S.] team in those two camps, it was a really great experience, and, yeah, I’m really grateful for that.”

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She also noted the scheduling of Tuesday’s game didn’t affect her personal timeline.

“I think the timing is kind of funny, but, no, I don’t think that was really a factor in my decision,” Yohannes said. “The time felt right. The moment felt right. When I made my decision, I think I just wanted to not prolong it anymore.”

And after she spoke about how welcomed she felt in those U.S. camps, she reflected at length about joining the program she grew up rooting for. She has become fast friends with Shaw and will train amid global stars at her position like Lindsey Horan and Rose Lavelle.

“I can sort of see me in front of the TV screen in the 2015 World Cup jumping up and down,” Yohannes said. “It’s just amazing history this team has, so great. And now that I’m alongside so many of these players that I can learn from — the likes of Lindsey, Rose, and so many others — but those two obviously being midfielders, I’ve looked up to those two growing up.”