Goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher retires from professional soccer, spent last 11 seasons with Chicago Stars

Former U.S. national team starter and longtime Chicago Stars goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher announced her retirement from professional soccer on Friday.

Naeher, who retired from the national team at the end of 2024 after helping the United States win the gold medal at the Paris Olympics, had signed a deal last December to remain with the Stars through the 2026 season.

With the Stars since 2015, Naeher appeared in 179 regular-season games with 558 saves and 45 shutouts. She set a club record with 11 saves in a match against North Carolina in 2018.

“The people you get to live this crazy life with are what make it truly special,” Naeher said in announcing her retirement on social media. “The ones you celebrate with in success and victory; and those that encourage and stand with you in disappointment; all the little moments we shared in between on and off the field.”

Naeher played for the now-defunct Boston Breakers before joining the Stars. For her NWSL career, she played in 224 regular-season games with 765 saves and 50 clean sheets.

“There are no words to truly encapsulate what Alyssa has meant to the Chicago Stars,” club President Karen Leetzow said. “She has lived through the greatest achievements and most trying moments in our history, and she has never wavered as a leader. Chicago has been fortunate to enjoy the greatest goalkeeper of all time in its backyard, while also sharing the joys of her journey on the game’s biggest stages."

Besides the Olympics, Naeher was also the starting goalkeeper on the U.S. team that won the 2019 Women's World Cup. She’s the only U.S. goalkeeper to earn a shutout in both a World Cup and an Olympic final.

She played in 115 games with the national team with 69 clean sheets.

“God has blessed me with a career far beyond anything I could have dreamed of,” Naeher said. “I am truly grateful for the game and for the lifelong friends it brought into my life and abundance of memories.”