The U.S. women’s soccer team is Lindsey Horan’s to lead now ahead of the Paris Olympics

NEW YORK — When Lindsey Horan was named a co-captain of the U.S. women’s soccer team a year ago, it wasn’t easy to know what she’d do with it.

Her talent wasn’t in question, or her role as a central midfield fulcrum. But she shared the armband with Alex Morgan, and there was no question about her: a veteran striker with the team’s most famous name of all.

Now, for the first time, Horan has the armband alone, thanks to Morgan not making this summer’s Olympic team. Twelve years after the Denver-area native shocked American soccer by skipping college to turn pro at 18 — yes, it’s been that long — the program is truly hers to lead.

And she is ready for it.

“I think there’s so many things that I’ve learned,” Horan said Monday at a joint news conference with the U.S. women’s and men’s Olympic teams. “I think I can continue to grow, and also just continue to have voices on this team and push more players to be leaders as well. Because we need everyone, and those voices can’t just be mine.”

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Horan didn’t grow into the captaincy solely by on-field results. Two major moments off the field have been milestones along the way.

The first came during last year’s World Cup, when Carli Lloyd — who deliberately passed the famed No. 10 jersey on to Horan — criticized the U.S. team’s perceived lack of effort from Fox’s TV studio.

Horan took it personally.

“It’s kind of frustrating for me to hear, especially knowing this team and knowing how much we put into every single game, how much preparation we put into every single game, seeing our trainings, seeing how hard we work,” Horan said last year. “You can’t question that we didn’t want to win the game. You can’t question [whether] we weren’t working as hard as we possibly could.”

Then, a few minutes later, she added: “For anyone to question our mentality, you know, hurts a little bit.”

Soon thereafter, Lloyd dialed down her words.

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The second moment came in April, amid the scandal over Korbin Albert’s homophobic and transphobic social media activity — including liking posts cheering Megan Rapinoe’s injury in the last game of her career. A few days before the U.S. women played in the SheBelieves Cup, Horan and Morgan delivered a public statement on the matter.

“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,” Horan said. “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.”

Along with that, multiple sources have said since then, Horan laid down the law with Albert behind the scenes, and it made an impact.

That wasn’t just because Horan is the captain. Since she plays her club soccer for France’s Lyon, she’s been watching Albert since the 20-year-old suburban Chicago native left Notre Dame as a sophomore in January 2023 to turn pro with Paris Saint-Germain.

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Horan has been at Lyon since the start of 2022, and she started her pro career with PSG from 2012-16. When Lyon played PSG early in Albert’s tenure, Horan crossed the field during pregame warmups to welcome Albert to life abroad.

“She came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I went through the same thing — if you ever need something, just reach out, no problem,’ " Albert told The Inquirer over the winter, before the controversy erupted.

Three months later, Horan’s words came with some steel.

“It’s shaped me a lot,” Horan said of how she handled the tumult. “I think it’s a lot of learning lessons that you get thrown into, especially during the World Cup, but nothing that I think I’m incapable of. I think you grow into it, and you get more of a voice, but also a voice for the team.”

Many fans would have liked to see more of a public reckoning, but new manager Emma Hayes has signaled it won’t be coming.

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There, too, is a new dynamic for Horan. While the U.S. women’s team has a venerable history of players who seize the spotlight, it now has a manager who is more comfortable taking it — and using it — than some of her predecessors.

“You have a manager that can come in and kind of take that away from the players, and take the stress and pressure away,” Horan said. “She’s funny when she does it, and keeps the media happy at times as well. I think we appreciate that a lot as players.”

(Hayes is indeed a great quote, with the added benefit of already knowing many journalists from her past years coaching in this country.)

Horan also intends to not be the only player of this new era who speaks up. The Olympic roster is full of natural leaders, from veterans Crystal Dunn and Alyssa Naeher to the younger Tierna Davidson, Naomi Girma, and Sophia Smith.

“I think giving voices to them, and making sure that they know that this is their team,” Horan said, “some of those young ones, they make up a good chunk of this team. And I think that’s really important for them to know that I will need them, and we are one. It’s not just me at the end of the day.”

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Davidson qualifies naturally for that. The 25-year-old played at the 2019 World Cup and 2021 Olympics, has already captained the Chicago Red Stars and now Gotham FC in the NWSL, and has seen much of Horan’s growth up close.

“It’s a massive responsibility, and it’s something that you have to grow and learn with every day, and I think she’s done a really good job with that,” Davidson said. “I think she’s understood the importance of what that role means not just for herself as a player, but also as an ambassador for the sport, as an ambassador for the team.”

Though the U.S. isn’t favored to win these Olympics — Spain is, with host France and the Americans in the next tier — Horan made it clear that she will not lower the program’s internal standards.

“I would be upset not to say that the standard of the U.S. national team is excellence,” she said. “We want to win, we’re winners, we’re competitors, and we’re going to face some of the best teams in the world. And at the end of the day, that’s where we want to be: We want to win as bad as possible.”

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Times listed are Philadelphia time. All of NBC’s video streaming of the Olympics is available free with pay-TV provider authentication at NBCOlympics.com, or via subscription on Peacock.

Saturday, July 13: Warmup game vs. Mexico at Harrison, N.J. (3:30 p.m., TNT, truTV, Telemundo 62, Universo, Max, Peacock)

Tuesday, July 16: Warmup game vs. Costa Rica at Washington (7:30 p.m., TNT, truTV, Universo, Max, Peacock)

Thursday, July 25: Group stage vs. Zambia at Nice, France (3 p.m., USA Network, Universo, Peacock)

Sunday, July 28: Group stage vs. Germany at Marseille, France (3 p.m., USA Network, Telemundo 62, Peacock)

Wednesday, July 31: Group stage vs. Australia at Marseille (1 p.m., E!, Universo, Peacock)

Saturday, Aug. 3: Quarterfinal at Paris if group winner (9 a.m., E!, Telemundo 62, Peacock); Marseille if runner-up (1 p.m., Telemundo 62, Peacock); or Lyon (11 a.m., E!, Universo, Peacock) or Nantes (3 p.m., English TBD, Universo, Peacock) if a third-place qualifier

Tuesday, Aug. 6: Semifinal at Lyon if group winner or runner-up (E!, Universo, Peacock); or Marseille if a third-place qualifier (3 p.m., English TBD, Universo, Peacock)

Friday, Aug. 9: Bronze medal game at Lyon (9 a.m., USA Network, Telemundo 62, Peacock)

Saturday, Aug. 10: Gold medal game at Paris (11 a.m., USA Network, Telemundo 62, Peacock)