In case you’ve been nowhere the sports pages this week, then you may not know that Abby Wambach has just played her very last game of soccer. Wambach openly gay and a six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award, has been a regular on the U.S. women’s national soccer team since 2003 earning her first cap in 2001. As a forward, she currently stands as the highest all-time goal scorer for the national team and holds the world record for international goals for both female and male soccer players with 184 goals. In 2012, Wambach was awarded the FIFA World Player of the Year, becoming the first American woman to win the award in ten years, and earlier this year she was included in Time Magazine’s Time 100 list as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
In this real tearjerker of a goodbye that is actually an advert for Gatorade, Wambach wants to now quietly disappear “Forget me,” she says. “Forget my number. Forget my name. Forget I ever existed.”
