TST offers an opportunity both to relive glory days and fight for a $1M prize, but it all comes with plenty of hard work
Jenny Chiu was nervous when she first got to Speedy Turtles training camp. After almost a decade away from playing professional soccer, she was back in the kind of intense environment that she thought was long in the past.
Instead, she found a meticulously planned out weekend: workouts, team dinners, scrimmages, meetings, photographers, videographers. Those gathered – some of whom she knew, and others who had only been introduced on a Zoom screen – were her new teammates.
And she was supposed to be their star player.
“First day, I'm like, ‘Oh, my god, these people are going to think I'm horrible. They're going to think I'm horrible because I couldn't get the passing movements down,’ ” Chiu said. “Of course, I made up for it in the scrimmage.”
Such is the often bizarre nature of The Soccer Tournament (TST), due to start in North Carolina this week. The men’s version is well established at this point, with the women’s in its second year as a separate entity. But while the men’s iteration seems more of a casual get-together, a group of old mates showing up to play footy for a couple of days, the women’s is a far more competitive, significant exercise.
This is a pickup tournament in the North Carolina heat that requires immense training, nonnegotiable professionalism, and a route back into the game for some footballers who thought they had left it long ago.
“More than anything, it's the glory and the experience of getting to play again, like my personal story, putting my boots back on and showing people that I was a damn good player,” Chiu said.
She’s not the only one. In 2023, TST was formed as a co-ed tournament that didn’t quite generate the buzz many had hoped. A year later, it was more fleshed out with a separate women’s bracket that featured eight teams. This year, it’s up to 16, and littered with a mixture of ex-pros, current college students, and everyone in between.
This is a microcosm of the women’s soccer world. And to the players, it is much, much more than just a kickabout with some friends with a hefty prize pot.
Getty ImagesChasing something 'badass'
Hope Solo was in the mountains for two years. After a career marked by immense goalkeeping success – but no small amount of controversy – Solo stepped away from the spotlight and into rural North Carolina. She wanted to live a normal life, remove herself from the soccer space that had given her so much, but also brought so much of personal life – for better and worse – into the fore.
Only something “badass” would draw her back in, she said.
And that’s what TST has proved to be. Solo’s mission is a little different to most. While others have reassembled old squads, or developed certain play styles, Solo is on a, well, Solo mission to highlight the parts of the game in corners of the world unseen and unscouted. The players on her squad are from all over the world, top talents that she thinks are just waiting to be discovered.
“We’ve been looking at Eastern Africa, South Africa, all parts of Africa, which is really a huge talent pool of players,” Solo told GOAL. “You're really trying to work with these fantastic players who need the opportunity, who want the opportunity, but simply because of the red tape, aren't as easily able to maximize the opportunities.”
But in a way, recruiting so widely, assembling such a team, has put more pressure on her. It has been nearly a decade since Solo last played a match for the USWNT, and nine since she last kicked a ball professionally. Soccer hasn’t been out of her life, she says, but it might as well have been from a practical perspective.
Training has been a mixed bag. All of the strength and conditioning work has come back relatively easily, she says. And diving – even on a surgically repaired shoulder – hasn’t been too bad. But some of the soccer specific movements, the stuff with the ball at the feet, have been far more challenging to recover.
“The hardest part for me has been getting that endurance back in my groins,” she said. “That is a muscle that, if you don't play soccer every day, that’s not easy to get back.”
That could be particularly problematic in a seven-a-side play. The format brings different facets of play into the game less common than in full-sided football. One of them is the demand that goalkeepers use their feet.
These days, it’s common practice: every youth goalie should be able to pass with the deft touch and effortless ease as a regista. When Solo played professionally, the soccer world hadn’t quite undergone that revolution. Sure, she could knock it around, but the physical skill of kicking the ball is more important to her at 43 than it was at 25.
“I've been very focused on getting my foot skills with the ball, my touches, my striking,” she said.
Still, that’s part of the appeal. Solo may be a legend of the game, but this isn’t really the same sport anymore. TST, instead, is a chance to relearn, rejuvenate and reconnect.
AdvertisementJenny Chiu'Catching people by surprise has been incredibly fun'
The same goes for Chiu. In another way, the former UNC forward – who had a brief professional career – is after the same thing: to prove that she can do it. But for her, it’s as much as showing it to everyone else as well as herself.
“I’m not here because I'm a joke. Like, I'm here because I'm good at what I do. I have the experience as a player, and I’d like that respect,” Chiu said.
It’s a familiar battle. Chiu, who is now an analyst for CBS Sports, has fought perception as part of the media. Chiu has been conscious, she admitted, that some see her as a “face” on the sidelines, rather than a skilled footballer. Her first touch at media events or prowess in pickup matches is usually met more with shock than a sense of respect.
“I’ve played in the Inter Miami media game for two years, and every time everyone comes up to me that I've worked with and are like, ‘We had no idea you were so good,’ “ Chiu said, “And I think that for me this is a platform to show you guys I work in football because I love football and I actually played. And that's my motivating factor.”
The wonderfully named Speedy Turtles FC have certainly handed her a chance. Chiu, who played in a duo of youth World Cups, is expected to be the standout for a team consisting of players who practiced their craft mostly at high level colleges – but is admittedly low on professional talent.
“It's hard because that anxiety inside of me, of like, needing to prove myself hasn't existed, really in other arenas,” she said. “But people don't know the player I am, and that's been very eye opening, catching people by surprise has been incredibly fun.”
It’s the kind of pressure that she craved, to be honest, but has also mandated that she train up. She has chronicled it all on Instagram, 1v1s on empty turf fields, touches with both feet, shots lasered into top corners past stranded goalkeepers.
“Once you get into the other side of football, you're no longer used to the brain aspects of drills that used to be very natural,” Chiu said. “My brain doesn't click as ‘Pass, turn, run around this cone and then give it to that person.’ Little sequences of passing that were easy before – my brain can't do it now in the same way, because I haven't done it.”
Her first touch is still there, and she feels confident enough in her attacking prowess to help the Turtles make some noise.
The Soccer Tournament'You’ve got to put in some work to be there and stay there'
Alex Kimball has a different challenge. Solo’s side are here to highlight those in the shadows. Chiu is the razor sharp edge of a team still finding its feet. Kimball, meanwhile, has a target on her back.
The former Peruvian international who had a brief stint in the professional game after graduating from UNC, is now in her third year playing in the tournament. She was there in the old days, when women and men competed in the same bracket. That iteration of the tournament, in 2023, is a wash for her.
“Being the only women's team in a male bracket, we were in a completely different head space,” she admitted.
But last year, she was part of the Team USA squad that won the whole thing. That side didn’t take the tournament seriously enough at first, she conceded. They lost their first game, which served as a wake up call of sorts for the run that followed. This time, though, they have a target on their backs. And Kimball feels that it’s time to step up.
“It's a privilege to be in that consistent, top one, top two, top three,” Kimball said. “You’ve got to put in some work to be there and stay there. We're looking forward to competing again and again.”
Her regimen is different, though. While Chiu can work between TV hits and brand deals in the Miami sun, and Solo can retreat, Kimball has tried to work her training into her daily life. These days, she is a youth coach and one-on-one trainer. That means she can hop in here and there, stay sharp in scrimmages or use her day job as a means of keeping her own skills up to date.
“It gives you late nights and early mornings to try to fit it in,” Kimball said. “And luckily, with me being a coach and having access to balls and cones and fields and goals and people to pass to me has been an advantage in my own training.”
What that can’t account for, though, is the weight work she found she needed – and all of the other bits in between. Team USA are taking this thing seriously. There have been Zoom calls with tactical conversations, even set piece plays drawn up to give them an edge for later in the competition.
“It's a mix of bullet points of different sections and different moments of the game, set pieces, everything under the umbrella – with a couple of clips from the past seasons that allow us to make some better adjustments moving into this year,” Kimball said.
Somehow sliding that in has been difficult. It sometimes means moving things around, getting up early, going to bed late. But for the chance to defend a title, she will willingly put the hours in.
Getty Images'I just get to focus on football'
And more broadly, that’s the point. TST is intended to be fun. It’s a good laugh in the summer sun, featuring big names and an even bigger platform.
A cynic could interpret it as a modified version of a traditional game that is already fading. But for those who were in the game in its purest form, and have an opportunity to stay around it, this is a chance to relive the glory days in the summer sun. That’s why it’s worth training for.
“I'm just going to feel it out,” Solo said. “If I want to laugh, I'll laugh. If I want to be intense, I'll be intense. There's going to be a point where I just get to focus on football.”