For fans who know Dunn mainly from the national team, her semifinal goal was surprising for another reason: she was playing at midfield. In 129 appearances with the U.S. women, Dunn has notched an impressive 24 goals and 19 assists, but she has done so largely while playing as a wing-back defender.
Dunn played midfield and forward for her Long Island high school, and went on to play both positions at the powerhouse University of North Carolina, where she won a national title and the Hermann Trophy, awarded to the player of the year. There is no question Dunn is an elite defender, but she is also a prodigious attacker and feared playmaker, capable of making magic out of limited space and using both feet. (She became the youngest NWSL player ever to win the Golden Boot award in 2015, after leading the league in regular season goals scored.) For these talents, she is persistently labeled a “versatile” player.
“She is a world-class left back and that she can also be a world class 8, 10, wherever you wanna throw her,” Sauerbrunn said. “I can’t name many players in the world in the women’s game that can do something like that. She’s not out of position anywhere. Anywhere she wants to play, she’s in position.”
But versatility has its downsides. I asked if the requirement to be all the things at once as a player ever felt like a burden. “Yeah,” Dunn said, and immediately sucked in her breath. “It’s been a massive burden on me to switch who I am given the team that I play for, and it’s something that I only go through. It’s really hard to speak about because…” She paused, and then began to cry, something she’d warned me might happen in the course of our day together. (“I’m a Cancer. I cry once a day.”) After a moment, she collected herself, and launched into a monologic dissection of her soccer career while wiping a few errant tears.
“I think it’s hard because I’m the only one who has to do it,” she said. “I step into camp, and I feel like I lose a part of myself. I no longer get to be Crystal who scores goals, assists, is this attacking player. I step into an environment where I have to be world-class in a position that I don’t think is my best position. But I’ve owned it. I’ve made it my own, and I’ve tried to create it in my most authentic way. But I don’t love it. I love playing and I love competing, so that brings me up to the level that I need to be at, but it really is hard when I look around and I’m like, Well, no one else has to do this. I am the only person who does not stay put in one position and always has to change given what my coach thinks of me.
“It hurts at times,” she continued. “I try to accept it as: it’s a compliment, you get to play different positions, you’re good at so many different things. But if I believe I’m good at this one thing, why doesn’t my coach think I’m good at that one thing? Why would he or she move me? There are years that go by where I’ve owned it, I’m doing positive thinking about it, and then there’s moments where I’m like, I don’t think I could do another day of this. And I think I was probably pushing that limit at the end of 2021. I think I severely needed a break because of all the roles and responsibilities I had to manage. I got sick of feeling like I wasn’t good enough, feeling like I’m always having to earn my right onto the field.”
Emma Carmichael
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