Alanna Kennedy, toughest player in women's soccer?

Who could forget Alanna Kennedy’s reaction during Australia’s friendly encounter with New Zealand in 2022, when she caught a glimpse of her freshly broken nose on the jumbotron and shrugged?

She didn’t flinch — she just laughed it off.

Last Tuesday, Kennedy proved once again that pain is a state of mind. In the 32nd minute of a 2-0 friendly win over South Korea, she was involved in a crunching collision with teammate Tameka Yallop. The players clashed heads and lay on the floor before receiving treatment and playing on. Kennedy walked away with a massive shiner. Just another day at the office.

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“As long as I was cleared for concussion, I was going to play,” she tells The Athletic over a video call from Houston. She’s back from international duty, perhaps still a bit jetlagged, but suited up for her new squad, Angel City FC, against the Houston Dash, with a shiner to match. “It was always going to bruise and once the pain happens then you just move on, keep playing. I watched so many women do the same thing.”

Kennedy posted pictures from the game and a video of the aftermath on Instagram, and the comments quickly lit up with praise for her grit.

“Toughest player in Women’s football,” commented one follower. “She is a star, a real shiner on and off the field ;)” chimed in another. “It is the same color as Manchester’s third kit,” said one, presumably referencing Manchester City’s maroon strip.

The praise reflects the resilience she has shown throughout her career, a trait she developed as a young girl in Rosemeadow, a suburb of Sydney, where she played soccer with boys.

“Maybe it all stems from those early years — when I was a kid, I was the only girl on the team,” she says. “I remember always feeling slightly out of place, like they didn’t want me there, and they’d hack my ankles. So I guess I learned to be resilient pretty early on.”

Others recognized her talent and cherished it. At Westfields Sports High School, a selective school renowned for its athletic programs, Kennedy started to turn heads. She earned a spot on the Australian Under-14 national team and by 17 she was a Young Matilda. “I consider myself pretty lucky,” she says. “Obviously there is a lot of hard work but for me I had a very upward trajectory from a young age.”

Kennedy’s professional career has not been short on passport stamps or silverware. She kicked off her professional journey with Sydney FC in 2010 as a teenager in Australia’s W-League. Over the next six seasons, she moved across Australia, playing for a handful of teams, before heading to the U.S. to join the now-defunct Western New York Flash.

For the then 21-year old, moving to Buffalo in the dead of the winter was a bit of a shock. “I did not expect it to be as cold as it was when I first got there!” she remembers. “It was isolating.”

She missed the good coffee and famous Aussie breakfasts of her beachfront hometown. She also recalls how different the standards were back then, with facilities and resources far more limited. But the hardships and the leap paid off: Kennedy helped the club win the 2016 NWSL Championship in what turned out to be the franchise’s final season in New York.

The following year, she was traded to Orlando Pride in exchange for midfielder Sam Witteman. During the NWSL off-season, she flew back to Australia — first suiting up for Melbourne City, then returning to her roots at Sydney FC, where she claimed her third W-League title.

At the time, the longer NWSL offseason lined up perfectly with the Australian league schedule. “It’s funny ’cause now I know why it is so important to have an offseason,” she says. “But at the time we had to keep fit and keep playing. It was just the norm. And I was a lot younger then!”

Then came 2020 and with it, a global pause. But Kennedy didn’t stay still for long. As the NWSL scrambled to salvage the Covid-impacted season with a makeshift Fall Series — 18 games played in regional pods to limit travel — she took a different path. Kennedy headed to London, joining Tottenham Hotspur on a six-month loan with an option to stay.

Meanwhile, Racing Louisville snagged her rights in the NWSL expansion draft. But when her contract wrapped, Kennedy signed with Spurs through the end of 2021  before making the leap to Manchester City, where she made 64 appearances in all competitions, including three strong seasons in the Women’s Super League.

And in between it all, came a career-defining chapter: representing Australia on home soil in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup — a moment that changed everything.

“It was definitely the highlight of my career,” she says. “It was a pivotal moment for our team. Plenty of Australians knew the Matildas, but the way the entire country embraced us, that was honestly so amazing.”

Now 30, Kennedy is back in the NWSL; this time on the west coast with one of the most exciting teams in the league, playing alongside USWNT’s rising stars Alyssa and Gisele Thompson, and the New Zealand captain, Ali Riley. From the facilities to the fans, Kennedy recognizes how much the league has achieved in the last five years.

“It’s amazing to see the growth of the game,” she says. “Nothing was handed to us, as female footballers. I think we worked really hard to get the game where it is now, which in some respect something to be really proud of but also something that maybe comes a lot easier to men’s football.”

(Top photo: Harry How/NWSL via Getty Images)