The U.S. women’s soccer team will finally return to the area this fall
The U.S. will play Portugal at Subaru Park on Oct. 23, for their first visit here since 2022. It will be a tribute to retired superstar Alex Morgan, who scored her first national team goal there.

Philadelphia’s wait to welcome the U.S. women’s soccer team back to town will end in October.
The reigning Olympic champions will play Portugal at Subaru Park on Oct. 23, a source with knowledge of the matter told The Inquirer. An official announcement is due later Monday. It will mark their first visit here in three and a half years.
And though the contest will officially be just a friendly — the U.S. won’t play in a formal competition until next year’s Concacaf championship — it will have two extra layers of meaning.
One is that the night will serve as a tribute to superstar striker Alex Morgan’s retirement last year. She was pregnant with her second child when she hung up her cleats, and gave birth to Enzo in March.
If it seems odd that Chester would be the setting for a California native who never played for a club team here, there’s actually a good reason to honor her here. The Union’s home was the stage for Morgan’s first of her 123 national team goals in 224 games, back in October of 2010.
The second layer is that this game is expected to see the return of the U.S. team’s Europe-based stars who were given the last round of games off by manager Emma Hayes.
They include forward Catarina Macario of England’s Chelsea; midfielders Lindsey Heaps and Lily Yohannes of France’s Lyon; defenders Emily Fox and Jenna Nighswonger of England’s Arsenal; versatile defender Crystal Dunn of France’s Paris Saint-Germain; and goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce of England’s Manchester United.
» READ MORE: Emily Fox’s USWNT experience helped her lead Arsenal to the Champions League title
Fans might also see the national team return of one of the team’s biggest NWSL-based stars, Trinity Rodman, who’s been out since April due to back issues. She returned to training this month with the Washington Spirit, and the U.S. game here will be the program’s first contest since July 2.
The rest of the roster will be anyone’s guess until Hayes sets it in the fall. She has brought in a pile of new talents since last year’s Olympics, and we’ll see how much room the return of the big names leaves for the competition.
As of now, there aren’t any players from the Philadelphia area in the senior U.S. player pool. The closest prospect to breaking through is 22-year-old Voorhees native Riley Tiernan, whose strong rookie season with Angel City FC has earned two invitations to the U.S. under-23 squad this year.
In the meantime, many local fans have gotten behind midfielder Sam Coffey, a Penn State product whose stock has shot up over the last year. (She’s also the sister of Inquirer sportswriter Alex Coffey.)
» READ MORE: The USWNT has not just a new era of players, but a new era of leaders
What to know about Portugal, and about ticket sales
Portugal has made a slow but steady rise through the women’s game in recent years. The Navegadoras currently stand 22nd in FIFA’s global rankings, 13th among European nations.
They will likely fall at the next release, having gone out of the recently concluded European Championship in the group stage, but they tied eventual semifinalist Italy along the way. They also earned a 1-1 tie at home with England in February in the UEFA Nations League, a result that got the world’s attention.
U.S. fans might remember the last time the Americans played Portugal, though it’s not a good memory: a scoreless tie in the group stage finale at the 2023 World Cup where Portugal nearly pulled off a last-minute upset.
The current squad’s big names include Gotham FC forward Jéssica Silva, and two midfielders on big Spanish teams: Barcelona’s Francisca Nazareth and Atlético Madrid’s Tatiana Pinto.
» READ MORE: Delran's Carli Lloyd shared a lifetime of emotions at her Hall of Fame induction in May
The game here, a 7 p.m. kickoff on a Thursday night, will be the first of three in the October FIFA window. That means the U.S. will also have a few days of training camp here in town. The other two games’ venues and opponents will be revealed in Monday’s announcement.
Ticket presales for various levels of U.S. Soccer memberships, and one for Visa cardholders, start in stages from Tuesday-Thursday. The public sale starts Friday at 10 a.m.
The USWNT’s history in the Philly area
Subaru Park used to be a regular stop for the U.S. women. They played there eight times from 2010-22, including twice in 2014 when the stadium hosted Concacaf’s 2015 World Cup qualifying tournament. Their most recent visit was on April 20, 2022, when a then-teenaged Rodman scored her first national team goal.
Along the way, the Americans visited Lincoln Financial Field once in 2019, for one of their World Cup victory tour games. Coincidentally, Portugal was also the opponent, and the 4-0 win drew a crowd of 49,504 — still the record for the largest crowd for a standalone U.S. women’s team home friendly. (A game in Atlanta last year drew 50,644, but it was in a SheBelieves Cup doubleheader.)
» READ MORE: How a former Philly community newspaper editor became an agent of change in global soccer
We’ll have to wait to see if Philadelphia gets a chance to break its record in the future. Hosting this game at the Linc wouldn’t make sense since it’s during football season, with both Temple and the Eagles running over the gridiron throughout the fall.
But with the United States set to host the 2031 women’s World Cup, cities will soon have to start thinking about whether they’ll bid to be involved. Philadelphia hosted the last time the tournament was played here, in 2003. Given the current buzz around soccer overall here, including this year’s men’s Club World Cup and next year’s big World Cup, a lot of people will want to see the Linc involved again.
And there might be official interest. Earlier this month, City Representative Jazelle Jones attended a workshop for interested cities that U.S. Soccer hosted near its new home in Atlanta.
Former U.S. manager Jill Ellis, who led the team when it played here in 2019 has encouraged Philadelphia to put its hat in the ring.
“Let’s hope Philly gets a shot at being a host venue for the Women’s World Cup,” she said when she visited the Linc in April with a delegation from FIFA. “On a personal level, I love Philly. It’s an amazing sports town. I think to bring football of this caliber here, it’s fantastic.”
For the record, the U.S. men’s team hasn’t played here since the summer of 2019. A lot of people would like to see that wait end soon too, not least the program’s many players from the Philadelphia area.