Alex Morgan on Her ‘Surprise’ Pregnancy and Finding ‘Peace’ in Retirement from Soccer (Exclusive)

The longtime USWNT star sheds light on her retirement plans in a new interview with PEOPLE

Not everything has gone to plan for Alex Morgan, but it’s all exactly where she wanted to end up.

The longtime U.S. Women’s National Team star, 35, simultaneously announced her retirement from soccer while also telling the world she’s pregnant with her second child in a bombshell video last month, days before playing the final competitive game of her career with the NWSL’s San Diego Wave FC.Morgan’s pregnancy was a “surprise” for her and husband Servando Carrasco, she tells PEOPLE a month later, and it forced her to move her plans for retirement a couple months early.“We’re just really looking forward to expanding our family,” the two-time World Cup champion says. “We’ve wanted to do this for a while, but we obviously wanted to find the right time. It came a few months earlier than anticipated, as the pregnancy was a little unexpected, but looking back I’m really grateful for how everything worked out.”Morgan says having a quicker run up to her retirement than planned made for “raw” emotions that proved to be “really moving” for her and her family, as she received hundreds of messages in the days after she announced her retirement in addition to the thousands of comments from fans and teammates online.

Originally, Morgan hoped to retire after one more run with the USWNT at the 2024 Summer Olympics. But disappointment hit when the longtime USWNT star — who helped lead the team to two World Cups, an Olympic gold medal and a bronze throughout the 2010s — wasn’t selected to join Emma Hayes’ squad in Paris.

“I wanted one last major tournament,” Morgan explains. “I just know how much those have meant to me in the past, both the Olympics and World Cup, so it would have been great to end my career on a high at a major tournament. After the World Cup [in 2023], not being able to have gone far enough to be really proud, I wanted to be able to push for one more. I think the team was moving in a different direction, was trending younger, was looking towards the future, was looking to empower the young players, and I fully understood that.”

She adds: “As much as I wanted to continue with the team and make the Olympic roster, I understood there was always a possibility of that, given my last year, and my age, and how long I had been with the team. There was a sentiment of passing the torch. As disappointed as I was, I carried on and understood that this is life.”

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Shortly after receiving the news that she wasn’t on the Olympic squad, Morgan says, “something beautifully unexpected happened and I got pregnant, so my body had other plans.”

Morgan, who first began racking up global soccer accolades back in 2008 at the Under-20 Women’s World Cup, is now turning to a new chapter in life — one focused on family, her multiple business ventures and her eponymous Alex Morgan Foundation, which celebrates its first anniversary this month.