Reacting to new head coach Emma Hayes’ decision to omit Alex Morgan from the U.S. women's soccer roster for the 2024 Paris Olympics, former U.S. men's national team star Landon Donovan drew on his personal experience of being left behind from a major tournament. He said the next few weeks will be emotionally tumultuous, but surmountable for Morgan. 

Morgan’s exclusion from the 18-women roster marks the end of an era in American soccer as the USWNT will play its first major tournament without its star forward since 2008. Morgan, who turns 35 Tuesday, has won two Olympic medals and two World Cups with the USWNT since her first international cap in 2010.

The June 26 announcement of the roster for the Summer Games, which begin July 26, prompted strong reactions from fans and former players alike, including Donovan. 

“I'm just really sad for Alex,” Donovan told USA TODAY’s Mackenzie Salmon. “Our careers have sort of paralleled each other. As she was playing in World Cups and Olympics, I was doing the same.”

Donovan, a cornerstone player on the USMNT from 2000 to 2014, was controversially excluded from the 2014 World Cup squad by then-U.S. Head Coach Jürgen Klinsmann after participating in a preliminary training camp ahead of the tournament. Donovan, now 10 years into his USMNT retirement, remains the team’s all-time assists leader and is tied with Clint Dempsey as the all-time scoring leader.  

“I've been in her shoes and it's a horrible, horrible feeling,” Donovan said of the similarity between his and Morgan's roster omissions. 

However dejecting of a process though, Donovan said abrupt roster exclusion comes with the job. 

“Ultimately, in our sport and in most team sports, one person ends up making a decision on your career sometimes, or your future, or your ability to play, and that's the reality,” Donovan said. “We all know it. We all signed up for it. So it’s not ‘woe is me’, but that is the reality. And if one person decides that you're not going, you don't go. And so that's the difficult part.”

Donovan acknowledged that “this is going to be a hard time for her,” but expressed his confidence that Morgan will endure this setback. 

“She has done so much for our women's national team and for U.S. Soccer in general," Donovan said. “I just hope this doesn't define her. I hope she doesn't define herself by this.

“It is going to be a hard pill to swallow, for sure, but she's a really strong woman, and I know she'll be okay."

Reflecting on his experience, Donovan offered Morgan three words of advice: “It will pass.” 

“For me, it was about two weeks of being really depressed and sad because you're realizing in that moment that your career with the national team is coming to an end, and you didn't get to decide it,” Donovan said. “Someone else told you that it was over.”