The U.S. Women’s National Team swept all five games at the 2018 Concacaf Women’s Championship to qualify for the 2019 Women’s World Cup and collect the 12th regional title in the team’s history. Here is a look at the USA’s World Cup Qualifying campaign: By the Numbers

0   Goals conceded throughout the tournament (5 games)
1   Number of U.S. hat tricks during the tournament (Lloyd)
2   Number of players who scored at least 1 goal in every game they played in (Heath & Morgan, they each played in four matches)
3   Number of individual tournament honors awarded to the USA: Golden Ball (Ertz), Golden Boot (Morgan) and Fair Play Award
3   Number of braces Alex Morgan scored during the tournament (vs. MEX, TRI & JAM)
4   Players saw action in all five games (Dahlkemper, Ertz, Horan and Lavelle)
4   Players that scored at least one brace during WCQ (Morgan, Heath, Lavelle and Rapinoe)

5   Number of assists Lindsey Horan had during WCQ, most on the team
5   Opening goals in each match (5 games) that were scored inside the 10-minute mark (Rapinoe 3rd min. vs. MEX; Mewis 5th min. vs. PAN; Morgan 9th min. vs. TRI; Heath 2nd min. vs. JAM; Lavelle 2nd min. vs. CAN)
5   Number of shutouts the USA earned during the tournament (Naeher (4), and Harris)
6   Number of Concacaf Women’s World Cup qualifying Tournaments the WNT has won in its history
6   Number of braces scored by U.S. players during the tournament (Morgan (3), Lavelle, Heath and Rapinoe (one each))
7   Number of goals scored by Alex Morgan, which was the most in the tournament and earned her the Golden Boot
8   Date in December that the 2019 FIFA WWC Draw will take place. It will be in Paris

10  Number of players who scored throughout the tournament: Morgan (7 goals), Heath (4), Lloyd (3), Rapinoe (3), Lavelle (3), Ertz (2), Dunn, Horan, Press and Mewis
14  Number of total shots against the USA allowed throughout the tournament (five games)
17  The USA was the 17th country to book its spot in the 2019 FIFA Women’s World cup in France
18  Number of WCQ appearances in Carli Lloyd’s career, a U.S. WNT record
19  Number of total assists for the USA during the tournament, which were registered by nine different players
20  Number of players that saw action during the tournament, which was the entire roster
26  Number of goals the U.S. WNT scored throughout the tournament
32  The USA has won 32 games in World Cup qualifying history out of 33 games contested. The only loss came in 2010 vs. Mexico.

Alex Morgan is in the business of scoring goals. And business is booming.

In her last 24 games playing for the U.S. Women’s National Team, Morgan has scored 24 times. They’ve come in a multitude of ways – from the penalty spot, headers, blistering drives and breakaways. She’s scored game-winners and braces, against Japan on July 26 at the 2018 Tournament of Nations, she bagged a hat trick. It was the fourth of her career.

Morgan then added not one, or two, but three braces during the 2018 Concacaf Women's Championship, one in each group game she played in, and another against Jamaica in the crucial semifinal win that booked the U.S. a spot in France 2019. A single goal vs. Canada in the title game on Oct. 17 would give her 7 total - the most of any player - and would make her the Golden Boot winner as the tournament's leading scorer.

She’s been scoring for the USA since 2010, and since scoring goals is perhaps the most difficult part of the game, there have been periods of great form and a few dry spells. But the past year has been impressive even by the high standards we’ve come to expect from the 29-year-old.

It’s always been clear that when Morgan is in the zone, opposing defenses are in for a long night.

This 24-game run – in which the USA has not lost – began in the latter half of 2017 after she returned from her six-month stint at Olympique Lyonnais, lasted through the final seven games of 2017, then continued into 2018.

The current streak began in the final game of the 2017 Tournament of Nations and now more than a year later, she’s still on a roll. She closed 2017 with seven goals in seven games (which made her the team’s top scorer for the year) and has a team-leading 17 goals in 17 games in 2018.

In a span of a few months, Morgan has put herself within striking distance of 100 goals. Currently at 97, she would become the seventh woman in U.S. history to reach the century mark and join a highly exclusive club which features Abby Wambach, Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, Michelle Akers, Tiffeny Milbrett and Carli Lloyd. Even more impressively, she is on pace to achieve this feat in less caps (currently at 151 after the Canada game on Oct. 17) than four of those six legends (Wambach and Akers scored goal No. 100 in their 129th cap; Hamm scored in her 155th cap) and could become the third youngest player in WNT history to reach 100. Wambach scored her 100th goal just after her 29th birthday and Hamm reached 100 when she was 26-and-a-half-years old.

Morgan’s first WNT goal came on Oct. 2, 2010 against China PR. She played in eight games that year and scored four goals. She followed that up with six goals in 2011 and had a breakthrough performance at the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Germany.

In 2012, Morgan had one of the best scoring years in U.S. history, tallying a remarkable 28 goals with 21 assists to lead the team in both categories. Her goal total was the third-best in U.S. history behind only Michelle Akers (39 in 1991) and Wambach (31 in 2004) and her assist total was tied for second-best in U.S. history behind only Hamm (22 in 2004) and tied with Carin Gabarra (21 in 1991). She also helped the USA to the gold medal at the London Olympics, scoring the epic 123rdminute game-winner in the semifinal final that is still the latest goal in FIFA history, and earned personal recognition when she finished third for the FIFA Player of the Year award and was named the U.S. Soccer Female Player of the Year for the first time.

The next two years for Morgan were unfortunately plagued by injuries. In 2013, she missed a few games but still played 811 minutes in 12 games and scored six goals with four assists. She spent much of 2014 finishing her recovery but returned to play in seven matches, starting four, while scoring five goals with four assists before she suffered an ankle injury in the second match of the 2014 CONCACAF Women’s Championship that kept her out for the rest of the year.

She rounded into shape just in time to participate in her second World Cup at the senior level and she was a key member of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup champions. She came off the bench in the first two games as she regained her fitness, but then got the start in the final group game against Nigeria and started all four knock-out round games. She played in 22 of the USA’s 26 games that year and scored seven goals. She got back to her old self in 2016 when she found the net 17 times, including what was probably the best goal of the year on March 9 against Germany in the SheBelieves Cup.

Her 2017-18 has been even more impressive, and not just because of her scoring rate, but because the goals are coming against elite talent at a time when the level of play worldwide is increasingly competitive.

With a trip booked to France and two away games left to play, the intensity of play is only increasing. And while the U.S. Women know that nothing is given and everything is earned, with Morgan in her current form, fans are surely looking forward to an entertaining few months ahead.

Fame is too small a word. It does no justice to what happens here in the National Soccer Hall of Fame, or what’s enshrined in its new walls. The grand opening, on Oct. 21 with the induction of the Class of 2018, was more than fireworks and high-tech wizardry. It was more than the red blazers and speeches. It was surely more than fame. In the Hall that night was decency and integrity. Fraternity and humility. Humor. Family. Gratitude. Mostly, there’s reflection here. It’s a Hall of mirrors.

The weekend began quietly. A ribbon-cutting under a heavy iron sculpture. It’s a player and he’s huge and inverted, flying into a bicycle kick. Motion and solid weight combined. We’ve seen this kick before, maybe on top of our first trophies at soccer camp, like the ones run by Dr. Joe Machnik over there, in the red blazer he got in 2017. Brad Friedel (Class of 2018) used to work those camps as a teenager. And Pele, how many times did he have to shoot and re-shoot his epic bicycle kick for the climax of John Huston’s 1981 movie Victory? And, hey, isn’t that Werner Roth over there (Class of 1989). He was a NY Cosmos teammate of Pele’s (Class of 1993), and he was in the picture too, as the villainous Nazi team captain.

It’s a Hall of Connections. You’ll find them even if you’re not trying.

All night at the North End of Toyota Stadium, where FC Dallas of Major League Soccer play their home games, guests wandered exhibits. That’s Willy Roy (Class of 1989), his face reflecting back off the glass as he admired five of Billy Gonsalves’ eight Open Cup medals, found forgotten in an unmarked Ziploc bag and restored to a high shine. Willy, now 75, never won one, but he scored twice in the Open Cup Final of 1965 for Chicago Hansa. He’s at the Hall with three generations of his family, his granddaughter in an old jersey of the Chicago Sting, the team Willy coached to two NASL crowns.

There’s the Women’s World Cup trophy over there. Olympic medals too. Gold, even. There’s the Dewar Cup, 106-years-old, behind glass in a room full of tables and chairs set as if for a grand wedding reception. And it’s that kind of day, too. That sense of honor drifts on the air. Celebrating something worth the effort. Yes, it’s a Hall of Honor too.

And it’s a Hall of Remembrance. For the inductees of the Class of 2018, they remembered the ones that got them there. Their families in attendance – parents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Old coaches too. Anson Dorrance (Class of 2008) introduced Cindy Parlow (now Parlow Cone). Ed Hynes, son of the late Jackie Hynes traveled from New York to the Hall’s opening. He brought with him the pocketful of coins his dad carried the day he was wounded by shrapnel at the Battle of the Bulge. They’re dented and damaged, like Jackie’s legs were in the fighting. In all, more than 140 players from the old American Soccer League (ASL) served in World War II.  

“No one gets here alone and it’s hard not to smile on a day like this,” said Brad Friedel, big as a grizzly bear, beneath a long list of names ringing the rafters. The list immortalizes each and every member of the Hall from its first induction Class of 1950. There’s Alex Ely up there of the old Philly Ukrainians and Archie Stark, as tough a brawler as he was a player. There’s Des Armstrong and Michelle Akers.

Friedel, a titan of the American game, sat at a table with old teammate John Harkes, wearing his red blazer from the Class of 2005. And they’re both a step away from the right boot Paul Caligiuri wore to fire the only goal against Trinidad and Tobago on November 19, 1989 and send the U.S. back to a World Cup for the first time in 40 years. There’s connections around every corner here.

Brad Friedel

Cindy Parlow Cone

Tiffeny Milbrett

There’s Tiffeny Millbrett, the tiny Women’s National team spitfire, always going a 100-miles per hour trying to find a way to goal that wasn’t there a split-second earlier. She gave the night a touch of humor, always needed in among the remembrances and earnestness. On the way back to her table, she stepped over the ball, built into a glass case in the floor of the banquet hall, that her teammate Brandi Chastain hammered home from the spot to win the 1999 Women’s World Cup. Earlier in the night, former USSF president Dr. Bob Contiguglia (Class of 2018) called that tournament “the most important women’s sporting event of the 20^th century.” And he was right.

Dr. Bob Contiguglia (center right)

JP Dellacamera

And it was none other than JP Dellacamera, honored earlier with the 2018 Colin Jose Media Award, who made the call that day in Pasadena. “Goal!” followed by over two minutes of silence meant to allow the moment, the sheer audacious history of it, to wash clean the over viewer. He made the call in Trinidad, in ‘89, too. Connections. Connections. Connections.

There was the color and spirit brought by the scores of veteran – executives and players and reporters – gathered for the 50^th anniversary of the old North American Soccer League (NASL). They perched on barstools at the nearby hotel. They back-slapped and carried on and relived those wild days of the 70s and 80s. All of the pioneering, the wacky jerseys, the up-by-the-boot straps grassroots-ness of it all.

If former NASL commissioner Clive Toye isn’t the best storyteller in the world, he’s surely in the running. There’s no MLS without that the NASL, folks. There just isn’t. Sporting Kansas City players gathered for pre-game breakfast in the very same hotel on that very same Sunday, and they did well to shake the hands of those who came before, who pulled off the miracle of making professional soccer a reality in America, filling the old Meadowlands and bringing Pele, the best in the world, to play on American shores. Matt Besler and Graham Zusi are looking in the mirror when they stand before Al Trost and Randy Horton, wild-man defender Bobby Smith, Kyle Rote Jr and Johnny Moore, who can trace his time in the American game back to the old LA Scots, through the NASL and all the way to an executive suite in MLS.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber

There’s melancholy too, just a little bit around the edges. It’s that last-call sadness, when the tablecloths get pulled away and the day becomes a memory. There’s lingering at the bar, no one quite ready to leave this magical space that hangs like a fog somewhere between then and now. But there’s no need to worry much – there’s space left in that list in the rafters for those yet to join this family of wonder. If you squint hard enough you can see those names coming over the horizon: Howard, Morgan, Lloyd, more even, stretching out as far and long as we care to take care of this American game. It’s a good thing the ceilings are high, because the Hall is forever. It’s for us and those who’ve passed and those who haven’t yet been born.

“’Oh that foreign game’ people say,” remembered Seamus Malin (Class of 2005), with the edges of his Irish accent intact. “But I correct them: ‘no, sir I say. This game here, is American, and it has its own history.” Amen. And that history is here in Frisco Texas as it once was in Oneonta New York. The last glass of champagne is swept up off the bar. A final photo taken in front of the glass cases that protect our game’s treasures. The Hall is quiet now. But it won’t be for long. This Hall is for all. And we, mere mortals, are invited, beginning November 2, 2018 to enjoy its celebration of the beautiful game in America. Go ahead and bask in all that’s reflected there.