Best of 2025: Proud Girl's Girl with Julie Foudy & Abby Wambach

Sarah Spain (0:00)

Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we've created a special advent calendar perfect for the work-free, schedule-free, liminal space between Christmas and New Year's. It's very simple. Just take a family-sized brick of cheese and cut and eat one to 11 teen slices every day. It's Wednesday, December 31st, and this week we're revisiting some of our favorite conversations from 2025 Today, it's two of my all-time faves, soccer greats turned podcast pals, Julie Foudy and Abby Wambach. We sat down in October for a live interview as part of the Women's Sports Foundation's Athlete Leadership Connection to talk about the transition from pro-athlete to post-soccer life, why women's sports are inherently political, learning how to enjoy the ordinary and not just the extraordinary, and how Julie and Abby's new podcast with Billie Jean King, Welcome to the Party, adds another layer of radical joy to the women's sports world. I loved chatting with these two powerhouses. Stick around to hear our conversation after the break.

They need no introduction, but they're gonna get a little bit of one anyway. Joining us, she's a two-time Olympic gold medalist, a World Cup champion, a six-time winner of the US. Soccer Athlete of the Year Award, and a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame. She's still the highest all-time goal scorer for the US national team, and her 184 international goals are second all-time for both female and male players. A New York Times best-selling author, she's part of the ownership group of Angel City FC of the National Women's Soccer League, is the co-host of the podcast, We Can Do Hard Things and Welcome to the Party. She's got a gold card that allows her to get a free burrito from Chipotle every day for the rest of her life. It's Abby Wambach.

Abby Wambach (1:37)

I do not still have that.

Julie Foudy (1:38)

I was going to say.

Abby Wambach (1:40)

So it said lifetime. And then I went there one day and I swiped it and it was like, wow. So I used it often and I would go with my kids.

Sarah Spain (1:54)

So they have a lifetime of burritos too quickly.

Abby Wambach (1:58)

It's true. I used it all up.

Sarah Spain (1:59)

Yeah. Joining her, a two time Women's World Cup champion, two time Olympic gold medalist and National Soccer Hall of Famer, who played for the national team from 1988 to 2004 She finished her international career with 274 caps and served as the team's captain from 2000 to 2004 and co-captain from 91 to 2000, former president of the Women's Sports Foundation. She's co-founder of the Julie Foudy Sports Leadership Academy, a co-owner of Angel City FC, a soccer broadcaster and co-host of the podcast, Welcome to the Party. In 1997, she was the first American and first woman to receive the FIFA Fair Play Award.

Julie Foudy (2:33)

Wow, that's a deep cut.

Sarah Spain (2:34)

Queen of the worm on the dance floor. We once partied so hard at her house, the cops came, but we thought they were fake and we asked if they were strippers.

Abby Wambach (2:40)

It's Julie Foudy.

Julie Foudy (2:41)

True story.

Abby Wambach (2:45)

Oh my god, I love your intros the best.

Sarah Spain (2:48)

We're like, we're not that loud. This must be fake. And they were real cops and they did not take their clothes off.

Julie Foudy (2:53)

Can we start with that story? Yeah. We were making, it was after an ESPNW summit that we did in Southern California. And we'd always have a party at my house after for all the ESPN employees. And we were doing a arm wrestling competition.

Sarah Spain (3:09)

You lost.

Julie Foudy (3:10)

And it was like a Wednesday night. And I told my whole block, like, we're having a party. We're going to be loud. So they all knew. So I knew that like the block knew we were good. And so we were like, people were chanting on who they wanted. It was Rachel Epstein and myself. And Rachel is like 100 pounds soaking wet. And she beat my ass.

Sarah Spain (3:27)

Yeah, she did. And khakis.

Julie Foudy (3:28)

Yeah.

Sarah Spain (3:29)

She was wearing khakis.

Julie Foudy (3:31)

And so they were chanting, chanting, chanting. And these cops come in from the side gate in like full on like bulletproof vests. No? Yeah.

Sarah Spain (3:41)

And we think we're California cops. So they were like kind of hot, kind of hot cops. Yeah.

Julie Foudy (3:45)

And we were like, y'all are strippers. We know what's going down.

Sarah Spain (3:51)

Like who called this after the Women's Summit? Ha ha. And they were like, we're actually real cops. There's a noise complaint. Oopsie daisy. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. We could spend a lot of time talking about, I don't know, Abby playing beer pong with Taylor Swift. But you want to tell that story real quick?