Alyssa Thompson takes her chance ‘Celebrating the Next’ with GEN / EA SPORTS

Following her biggest season yet, the 21-year-old Chelsea star returns home to host a special dinner connecting a soccer community on similar journeys.

By: Aaron Dodson

Searching for the answer, Alyssa Thompson takes time to completely consider the question:

What's the best part about being home again?

It's a slow morning in late June, a few weeks after the 21-year-old star footballer returned from playing in the Barclays Women’s Super League (WSL) for the past nine months. A move that sent her over 5,400 miles to London for her debut season with Chelsea Football Club.

Now, she's back in L.A., reunited with her sisters, Gisele and Zoe, and parents, Karen and Mario. A long-awaited homecoming, though not many could’ve warned Thompson — who turned pro in high school, skipping college entirely — how foreign all of this could feel. 

“Besides being with my family,” she says, diverting her eyes from the screen of a Zoom call. “I love going to the beach. It’s just nice to see the sunsets, the waves crashing. It’s so pretty.”

Despite savoring stillness, Thompson's schedule is still scheduling, as she prepares for the latest chapter of her EA SPORTS partnership. The first-of-its-kind program supports next-generation athletes — not just as competitors, but as culture shapers — from early in their careers, along following milestones. Thompson is in the founding class, alongside motorsports driver Bianca Bustamante, global footballer Endrick, NFL star Travis Hunter and top-ranked high school quarterback Elijah Haven. Her moment brings the program’s mission to life through community — a dinner she got the opportunity to host for contemporaries also pursuing soccer careers. A special event organized in collaboration with EA and TOGETHXR, a female athlete- founded media platform.

"For my 'Celebrating the Next' dinner, I wanted to connect with people and focus on mentorship," Thompson says. "I know how difficult the journey can be, so it’s about having each other’s backs. 

“It’s surreal to think that I can help lead the next generation.”

By now, Thompson is used to how swiftly life can unfold. Speed has never really scared her.

She’s always been fast, with head-turning pace that’s popped since she was a little girl. As a young teen, she received a national team camp invitation. By 17, she debuted for the senior United States women’s national team (USWNT). At 18, she turned pro and appeared in a World Cup in the same year.

And last fall, a few months before her 21st birthday, Thompson agreed to a transfer from her first pro team, Angel City FC in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) — leaving her hometown and family for the first time to traverse the globe. 

“Going to Chelsea was important for me,” Thompson recalled. “It was a bigger stage with more eyes from the world. I needed to learn how resilient I could be.”

Back home for summer, Thompson’s "Celebrating the Next" dinner delivered a forum to share what she discovered abroad, amongst a hand-picked guest list of rising NWSL and Major League Soccer talent, along with content creators, all united by the game they love.

“Going overseas taught me a lot about myself in terms of being independent and coming into my own as a player,” Thompson said. “What’s helped me a lot during my journey is not comparing myself to other people. In the beginning, I did that a lot.”

There’s some irony, though, between that philosophy and Thompson’s origins with her sister, Gisele, who’s 13 months younger, and now plays for both Angel City, and with Alyssa on the USWNT. Together as kids, they built their games through imitation. 

“Growing up, my dad trained us. But he never played soccer in his life,” Thompson recalled. “So, our story began with my dad on YouTube, looking up videos of Messi and Neymar, then teaching us himself in our little backyard.” 

Shaped since childhood by the trailblazers of U.S. women’s soccer, Thompson still carries one player’s message with her.

“I remember going to Alex Morgan’s soccer camp. And on everything she signed, she wrote, ‘Dream Big,’” Thompson recalled. “That stuck with me, because I’ve always wanted to play on the national team. So having Alex Morgan say, ‘Dream Big’ — that’s what I wanted to do.”

Years later, Thompson can tell you the exact moment she first believed in her own potential.

“When I got called to my first youth national team camp was when I felt like, ‘I’m actually good at this,’” she recalled. “I thought, ‘If I’m part of this group, then I’m one of the best at my age.’ So I kept going, hopefully to make it to the senior team.”

Exactly a month before her 18th birthday, on Oct. 7, 2022, Thompson made her senior debut, subbing on at London’s Wembley Stadium before nearly 77,000 people, the highest-attended friendly in USWNT history. At last, Thompson had delivered on the declaration to dream big.

“I wasn’t thinking about going pro until that first game for the senior national team,” Thompson recalled. “After that, people started asking. So, I started thinking, ‘Maybe I should go pro.’”

Three months later, she decided to forgo her commitment to Stanford University to become the first-ever high school player drafted into the NWSL. In January 2023, Thompson was selected No. 1 overall by her hometown Angel City FC, whose stadium is 15 miles from the backyard where she learned the game.

On March 8, 2023, she made her unofficial pro debut, scoring five minutes into friendly. A few weeks later, in her first official pro game, she scored again . But nothing compared to her World Cup debut later that year.

“I was super nervous,” she recalled. “I had just made it onto the roster — barely. So being able to even be at a World Cup was surreal for me.”

Also, surreal: Walking the halls of Harvard-Westlake, and having classmates celebrate you appearing in EA SPORTS FC 24.

“I honestly never thought I’d ever be in a video game,” Thompson recalled. “But I remember people at school were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I played with you on FC!’”

As many dreams as Thompson has fulfilled, plenty of moments have passed her by. She sat out her junior and senior high school seasons, before passing up on prom, graduation and college.

But when the chance arrived to play in Europe, she took it. Last September, Thompson joined Chelsea for a record-breaking fee of $1.3 million — the largest outgoing transfer in NWSL history. At 20, she had become Ïone of the biggest signings in the history of women’s football.

“It was a difficult decision,” Thompson said. “I doubted myself before I went. But I also knew that going to Chelsea would make me a better player and person, either way. What I really discovered is that I can do whatever I put my mind to.”

In her first season with the Blues, Thompson finished as the club’s second-leading scorer with nine total goals across all competitions, helped Chelsea win the FA Women’s League Cup — her first professional trophy — and was named Young Player of the Year at the London Football Awards. She also earned a spot on the WSL Team of the Season, receiving a special player card on FC 26, rated 95 overall.

The past year and a half has been nonstop for Thompson, who from March 2025 to this June, made a prolific 68 total appearances for club and country.

“I didn’t really have a break the whole season,” she said. “Once I started scoring goals and doing well early, the pressure was on. I learned how important it is to keep my confidence. But there was a period toward the end of the season that was really difficult. And not having my family to be there to support me was hard. Coming out of this season …  I just needed rest.”

Home in L.A., Thompson found her reset. Back where she began running toward her dreams. 

“I don’t know if 8-year-old Alyssa was thinking about being a pro. Or if she even thought she was that good at soccer,” she says, her eyes returning from the distance to the Zoom. “But I would tell her to just keep believing in herself.”

At her “Celebrating the Next” dinner, Thompson thanked her people for believing in her, too.

“Some of the players at this dinner have helped me become who I am,” she said. “From coming into a league where I was so young, to now being able to be one of the leaders here is really cool. Mentorship has made me a better person and player. I really don’t think I’d be in this spot without it.”

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