After testing positive for Covid-19 in December, Alex Morgan returns to the United States squad for the She Believes Cup this month after missing the national team’s January training camp. She revealed today in a press conference that she suffered from “a lot of symptoms from Covid

“I was fairly sick,” she admits. “Me and my whole family got it—(my husband) Servando and (daughter) Charlie—so with that said, we were together for 10, 12, 14 days and kind of just recovering, sleeping as much as we could. I was fighting off a little bit of a fever for quite a few days but as I got back and kind of took the right steps to get my body back into shape, I started to feel really good after about three weeks or so but it did take a little bit, and it took a lot of patience as well, on my end.”

Following the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final, Morgan had taken a year out from the national team due to pregnancy and gave birth to her first child, Charlie Elena in May 2020. She signed for Tottenham Hotspur in England in September but suffered minor injuries which prevented her from making her comeback to the game until November. After returning to play for the United States national team in a friendly win over the Netherlands, her return to full fitness was stymied once more by testing positive for coronavirus on returning to California for Christmas.

Nonetheless, the peculiarities of the global situation which has led to the suspension of various matches and even league seasons across the world means that Morgan goes into 2021 revitalized and not feeling as though she has missed out on playing opportunities like she might otherwise have been. “When I look at the break that I have had, it’s kind of been an interesting one because it’s been a really inconsistent one. I think that, that’s just the thing – inconsistency. I think everyone has had that. I look at myself, and although over the last year and a half, I haven’t really played that many games and I’ve kind of been really in and out with the national team, here and there, due to pregnancy, due to Covid and other things, I don’t feel like I’m that different than a lot of my team-mates because of the pandemic and just people getting Covid, people getting injuries, not having a place to play for quite a few months at a time”.