NASHVILLE, Tenn. — U.S. women’s national team forward Trinity Rodman left the pitch in tears after a hard foul from behind in the final minutes of the USWNT’s 2-0 SheBelieves Cup win over Argentina on Sunday.
Rodman instantly shouted in pain after appearing to be hit in the back by Argentina’s Milagros Martin, an 18-year-old defender. Rodman was attempting to receive a ball from Gisele Thompson near the sideline when the defender collided with her.
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Rodman grabbed her lower back as she fell to her knees, before rolling on the ground in pain. Martin was swiftly shown a yellow card as U.S. teammates surrounded Rodman and motioned for trainers to come onto the pitch. Rodman was on the ground for several minutes, wiping away tears, as trainers assessed her.
The crowd at Geodis Park had been rapt and engaged throughout the hard-fought matchup, cheering wildly for solid tackles by the U.S. and letting disdain known for fouls and apparent missed calls. But the noise quieted while Rodman was down.
It was a concerning scene for the 23-year-old forward who spent most of 2025 recovering from a recurring back issue that left her “in pain all the time.”
Rodman described the injury during an episode of ESPN’s “NWSL: The Final Third” as the result of “an accumulation of minutes” and playing through pain. After taking time to recover from that issue, her return to the pitch was set back again after she suffered a knee sprain in October. Rodman was finally back with the USWNT in January, days after signing a record contract with the Washington Spirit that made her the highest-paid NWSL player and one of the highest-paid players in the world.
Rodman left the pitch on her feet after trainers helped her off the ground. While on the sideline, she stretched, bounced on her toes and even jogged briefly. U.S. head coach Emma Hayes did not provide an update on Rodman’s status when asked about the striker by The Athletic in post-match media availability.
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“Haven’t seen her,” Hayes said. “She’d come off the field. She’s in the locker room. I don’t generally see the team till they’ve had their own debrief about an hour and a half after the game. So, I can’t give you one. Don’t know it.”
Rodman entered the match for Lily Yohannes in the 62nd minute to a roar of applause. She was among a trio of substitutions, as Hayes tinkered with the lineup to counter Argentina’s physical style of play.
Gotham defender Lilly Reale also left the pitch as Rodman entered, after a tough tackle that appeared to injure the NWSL 2025 rookie of the year’s right foot.
Goalkeeper Claudia Dickey and midfielders Lindsey Heaps (who captained the U.S.), Jaedyn Shaw and Olivia Moultrie cited the intensity of the match — physically and emotionally — to the media in the mixed zone after the final whistle. The U.S. committed 12 fouls to Argentina’s 21, according to ESPN stats, which included instances of hair pulling, crunching tackles and face-to-face confrontations between players.
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Two Argentine players received yellow cards. One was assessed when a player took Shaw down with a yank of her jersey and part of her ponytail in the first half. After the game, Shaw reflected on the lessons offered by needing to overcome the emotional ups and downs within a gritty game.
“Oof, yeah, that was a first of my career, and I wasn’t messin’ with it,” Shaw said. “But I think for me, like, something that I am working on is just my emotional control in games, so I think coming down from that, I needed to, you know, bounce back quickly, but yeah, that was not fun.”
Dickey, who earned her seventh career shutout with the national team, said the game was “a little more stressful than we anticipated.” The U.S. went into the competition with respect for Argentina as a good team, but she acknowledged “how physical they were surprised us. … I think we got a couple more fouls than were called, so it was tough to mentally stay in it, but we also planned for that. We talked about it at halftime, like there’s a game within a game, and Lindsey (Heaps) led the team really well in terms of staying level and just believing in the game plan and in each other.”
Following the foul against Rodman, Heaps addressed the referee directly. After the final whistle, she was seen on the pitch speaking to an Argentinean player.
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“I just said, I want to protect my players,” Heaps told reporters when asked about that conversation. “Some of the challenges I didn’t like, and I don’t think that’s necessary in a tournament like this. It’s one after the other after the other after the other, and it’s not just one or two. The Trin one kind of set me over the top.
“For me it’s just like — yeah, it’s a tournament. I know everyone wants to win. We go in hard for challenges as well, but, at the end of the day, some of those are really, really dangerous, and I don’t like it, and I want to protect my team. For me, that’s the job of the ref, to control that as much as possible. There’s (only) so much that I can do and say.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
US Women’s national team, Women’s Soccer
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