U.S. Women’s striker Alex Morgan; examining her amazing goal totals – Part I

Alex Morgan is many things to many people. Her knack for scoring late, vital goals has endeared her to the USWNT faithful. She’s poised to become the face of the USWNT, if not the women’s game as a whole. Her spread in this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition has, ahem, exposed her to wider audiences.

For once, it appears the hype is wholly justified. Morgan has plenty of substance to match the star power. And she’s got the stats to back it up.

ESPN’s stats sage Paul Carr crunched the numbers and found that her goals-per-international game average bests the likes of Abby Wambach and Mia Hamm. Paul also noted via Twitter the myriad ways in which her 22 career goals have been scored.

Here are a few other stats that illustrate how impressive - and indeed historic – her young career has been so far:

• The closing stages of matches are dubbed ‘Alex Morgan Time’ for a reason. Fourteen of her 22 total goals have come after the 60^th minute.
• Morgan has had five multi-goal games thus far. All have occurred in matches in which she’s started.
• Speaking of which, Morgan initially made her name as a dependable super sub. Ten of her first 12 international goals came in games in which she came off the bench. 2012 has seen Pia Sundhage give Morgan more license to start. It’s certainly paid off. She has made eight starts this year and has scored and/or assisted in five of those games.
• Flat track bully? Au contraire, mon frére. Sixteen of Morgan’s 22 goals have come against teams ranked top FIFA 20 in the world. Make it 18 if you expand it to top 25. Lest we forget 24^th ranked New Zealand.
• The former Cal Bear became a known commodity to the women’s soccer community during the 2008 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, scoring picturesque goals (like this one in the final) and winning many Chilean hearts. Morgan formed a dynamic strike partnership with Sydney Leroux. Leroux has been formally introduced to the senior USWNT set-up this year and the two have picked up where they left off. The pair has either scored and/or assisted 47.2% of the USWNT’s goal total this year.

(Be sure to check back for Part II in about an hour. Meanwhile...)

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