“Kick Off” by Hamish Bowles was originally published in the April 2016 issue of Vogue. For more highlights from Vogue’s archive, sign up for our Nostalgia newsletter here.

“I was the ultimate tomboy,” says women’s soccer superstar Alex Morgan, remembering her childhood. “I’m super competitive. I wanted to beat the boys at everything—I wanted to be faster, I wanted to be stronger.”

I, on the other hand, was the ultimate sissy. “He’s got footballer’s knees!” my father cheered the moment I was born. Unfortunately for him, I had zero interest in the Beautiful Game. I don’t remember anyone ever teaching me how to play; in England, it was just assumed every boy would pick up the basics. (Girls weren’t part of the picture back then—they had netball, rounders, and hockey to keep them busy.)

In a doomed attempt to get me interested, Dad took me, at age ten, to watch his beloved local team, Hendon, play in the Amateur Cup semifinal. I still vividly recall his unsettling transformation from a mild-mannered accountant into a Tasmanian Devil, hurling insults, forbidden swear words, and spit at the helpless players below. Not long after, Dad had to bribe me to go to a hot-ticket Liverpool vs. Chelsea match by promising a trip to the Portobello Road antiques market the next morning.

In 1999, when Morgan was ten, the U.S. Women’s National soccer team—led by Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Michelle Akers—won the FIFA Women’s World Cup 5–4 against China. From that moment on, she was hooked. By sixteen, already a star on her high school soccer team in Diamond Bar, California, she felt her childhood dream of becoming a professional player was within reach.

My own soccer goal, meanwhile, was to keep avoiding the ball at all costs. In my first term of high school, I was inexplicably picked for the first eleven—the elite team—probably because I could run fast. I briefly played goalkeeper, where I showed off more acting than athletic skill, pretending to just miss the ball as it flew toward me at top speed. Mostly, though, I hung around the edge of the field with my best friend, gossiping and admiring our imaginary nail polish while the ball and other players zoomed past. So never, in my wildest teenage dreams, did I expect that one day I’d be gossiping and getting my nails done alongside one of America’s most admired and celebrated soccer players.

Morgan is understandably baffled by my sad soccer story, with its pattern of resisting the sexist norm. “It’s almost the complete opposite for women soccer players,” the 26-year-old explains. “We’re dying to play, and people tell us, ‘You can’t play.’ I almost wish I’d been forced into it, instead of having to fight for it!”

I confide in Morgan that I’m being forced into the sport again now, for the first time since those embarrassing teenage years. The assignment would be bearable if it weren’t for the childhood traumas keeping me up at night. But if England’s Sir Stanley Matthews—a mid-century star my dad admired for his dribbling—was still playing at 50, the least I could do was give it a try.

My friend Simon Doonan offered some reassurance: He’s currently writing a book about soccer through the lens of fashion and style, a project I’m at least half-interested in. “There’s nothing I don’t know about George Best’s cleats,” Doonan told me over our pep-talk lunch. “It’s a stat-crazy world, so I’m looking for connections where fashion-obsessed players score more goals!” He backs up his theory by citing style-loving players like A.C. Milan’s Mario Balotelli (and his camouflage-wrapped Bentley Continental GT).Paris Saint-Germain’s Zlatan Ibrahimović (who favors Rick Owens and a man bun) and Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo, who arrives for training carrying a Gucci wash bag tucked under his arm like a small evening purse.

The ultimate football fashion icon, of course, is David Beckham, who practically invented the idea of the metrosexual man with his wholehearted embrace of fashion. “I like nice clothes, whether they’re dodgy or not,” Beckham has said, and who can forget his bold experiments with faux-hawks and sarongs?

As it happens, I recently found myself at a small dinner party in Manhattan with Victoria Beckham and her husband, and I thought I’d seize the moment and ask the glamorous soccer legend (looking flawless that night in Savile Row tweeds and elaborate tattoos) what advice he might have for me. David is a man of few words, but they’re usually well chosen. “Listen to the girls,” he advised. “They’re the most driven athletes I’ve ever known, and their success shows it. They know better than most of the guys. Listen to them—and run fast!”

We start with a ‘Turkish get-up,’ which, sadly, isn’t some fabulous fur-trimmed robe to strut around Topkapi Palace in, but a tough warm-up exercise.

Taking his advice, I begin my journey by flying to Los Angeles to work with Dawn Scott, the respected trainer who keeps the U.S. women’s team in fighting and winning shape. In the spirit of someone who does a spring clean before the housekeeper arrives, I book some pre-training sessions beforehand.

I meet my charming Brazilian-Swedish trainer, Daniel Söderström, in the pretty landscaped gardens around the La Brea Tar Pits on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has set up a floor ladder, cones, and a series of nets and goal posts under the shade of a spreading maple tree next to a pit where a prehistoric sloth was once trapped—an ominous sign for my own speed, if ever there was one.

Söderström and I work on my “cognitive skills,” which are sadly lacking, though not surprisingly: I can’t quite connect my foot to the ball. When I finally make contact, I kick it so far off target that it hits the maple tree’s trunk with such force that half a dozen squirrels go flying from its sheltering branches.

Two days later, I meet Scott at the StubHub Center in warm Carson, where she is putting Morgan’s teammate Christen Press through her paces. Growing up, Press tells me, she thought, “Soccer’s so fun because you have all your friends. You come to practice and you talk about everything and you’re running and gossiping. It’s like social hour!” If only I had seen it that way myself.

Scott, who wears her fine, blonde hair pulled back neatly, comes from the no-nonsense north of England, where she “grew up playing on the streets with the boys.” She fondly remembers her father taking her to local Newcastle games during the era of the charismatic Kevin “Mighty Mouse” Keegan, famous for his Barbra Streisand-in-Evergreen perm.

Scott’s training programs are customized for each player, taking into account age and injury history. The athletes, who are based around the country with their local teams when not training for the U.S., contribute their information—including diet and all-important sleep recovery—to a central online database. This way, Scott and head coach Jill Ellis can download it at the end of the day, monitor the GPS and heart rate of all the players, along with their speed, agility, and fitness levels, and adjust the routines accordingly. “It’s a daily ongoing process,” says Scott. “You’re dealing with 25 different personalities. You can’t expect them all to be the same.”

Now it’s my turn to get up close and personal with Scott’s all-star program. I start with forward-bend walks “to switch on the glutes and core.”According to Scott, who then introduces me to something devilish called a “Turkish get-up.” Sadly, it’s not a fancy sable-trimmed robe to strut around Topkapi Palace in, but a brutal warm-up exercise. Press performs the moves with smooth, ballet-like grace, holding a fifteen-pound weight above her head as if it were a dandelion puff. Scott coolly checks my form and hands me a shoe to use instead.

We move on to trap-bar work, power cleans, deadlifts, squats, kettle bells, Bulgarian split squats, down slides, mountain climbers, and box jumps. “It takes months, even years, to learn the technique,” Scott says reassuringly. “I don’t want you to get too tired too soon.” Honestly, I’m already exhausted. “Let’s do two different exercises,” she adds cheerfully, “and then we’ll head out to the field.” Oh no, I’d almost forgotten about that part.

A typical field session starts with a good warm-up and might include some speed work, followed by high-intensity interval training. “You run 90 yards, which should take you fifteen seconds, and then rest for fifteen seconds. You do twelve of those,” Scott says. I’m trying to process this alarming information, but I’m also taking in the beauty of the field, lined with eucalyptus and palm trees—a welcome change from the cold, muddy pitches I remember from childhood.

After four runs, my heart rate is pounding at 194. “Training like this is really, really hard,” Press tells me. “Training until you feel like throwing up every single day—it’s kind of miserable, actually. But that makes it so much more fun when you come back together as a team.”

Two months later, Scott’s hard work undone by holiday eating and laziness, I’m in Orlando, Florida, getting my nails done with Alex Morgan. She’s such a star that her new team, the Orlando Pride, was essentially built around her in 2015. Her husband, midfielder Servando Carrasco (they met almost ten years ago while both playing soccer at the University of California, Berkeley), had recently transferred to Orlando City. Servando has been moving them into their new house, since his wife only got back yesterday after three months on the road. “It looks so pretty,” Morgan says of their home, “but I had never actually been to the house or the neighborhood, so it was kind of a weird experience.” (She worked with a realtor over FaceTime.) “My husband got traded to Houston, and then here, and each time he had to find a place within 48 hours. That’s the life of professional athletes—you have to live your life on the go!” Morgan shrugs. “But I’m living with him for the first time since college, so I don’t really care where we are—we’ll make it work!”

Morgan may have just come from her hour-and-45-minute morning workout, but she looks prom-queen perfect, as you’d expect from this poster girl for women’s soccer. She’s wearing orchid purple leggings that show off her famously toned and muscular legs, her favorite Nike trainers in tangerine, a gray hooded sweatshirt, and a practical Marc Jacobs purse in navy and putty. Morgan has been to New York fashion shows three times and shops at Veronica Beard, Rag & Bone, and AllSaints. “A lot of fashion is now very athletic-looking, so that’s cool for me,” she says. “When I’m traveling, I need my basics with something that makes my outfit stand out. It has to be packable and interchangeable.”

Morgan promotes her sport not only through her amazing performances on the field (she’s known for her late-game heroics—like scoring the winning goal against Canada in the 2012 Olympics semifinal in London in the 123rd minute) but also through her motivational autobiography, Breakaway: Beyond the Goal, and her popular series of soccer novels for middle school kids. In addition to playing and writing, she’s a strong advocate for equality in a sport where sexism is still shockingly common, if not institutionalized.Late last year, Morgan and her teammates Shannon Boxx and Julie Johnston took part in a roundtable at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia. There, they talked about inequality in soccer. For example, the $265,000 salary cap for women’s national league players is less than one-tenth of what men’s major league players earn. Meanwhile, international stars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo make about $1,000,000 a week. After the U.S. women’s team won the thrilling 2015 World Cup, they received $2 million. In contrast, the German men’s team got $35 million for winning the 2014 cup. “I think players should be paid for what they’re worth and what they bring to the field,” Morgan said at the summit.

At 21, Morgan was the youngest player on the U.S. team for the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup. She was named U.S. Soccer Female Athlete of the Year in 2012 and finished third in the FIFA Ballon d’Or—essentially the world soccer MVP—that same year. At the ceremony, FIFA’s controversial president, Sepp Blatter, who had earlier suggested women players should wear “tighter shorts” to boost the sport’s popularity, didn’t even recognize Morgan. (There might have been some satisfaction in the women’s locker rooms when Blatter was forced to step down earlier this year after Swiss authorities filed charges against him for “criminal mismanagement and misappropriation.”)

Sexism also seems to be an issue in the fact that the seven U.S. women’s World Cup matches in Canada were played on artificial turf, even though most players had spent their careers on grass. Turf is much harder on the body, can cause impact injuries, and discourages bold moves like sliding tackles. However, women’s soccer has no hooliganism, and homophobia isn’t tolerated. “Gone are the days when you need to come out of a closet,” said Abby Wambach, a star in four World Cups and two Olympics. She was surprised by the media attention when she married her long-term partner, Sarah Huffman, in 2013. “I never felt like I was in a closet.”

When Morgan and her teammates beat Japan 5–2 last summer, over 25 million people watched—the highest rating ever for any American soccer match, men’s or women’s. Since then, the U.S. team has drawn crowds averaging 24,000, the largest for women’s sports anywhere in the world. “People want to watch something fun on the field, and I think other cultures are so against it that they won’t even give it a chance,” Morgan says. “If they did, I think they’d enjoy it.”

While Morgan wants other international teams to improve, she clearly has no plans to let her own performance slip. With the Olympics in August, her schedule is grueling. She gets barely two and a half weeks without training each year. “It goes by incredibly fast—faster than you’d ever want it to!” she says. She spends her downtime doing yoga, meditating, and playing beach volleyball.

These days, she’s more careful about her diet than ever. “As I’ve gotten a little older, you notice that what you put in your body really affects your energy,” she says. “I know we need carbs for energy to play, but I eat more proteins and grains like couscous and quinoa. I’ll have rice, but I try to limit bread and unnecessary stuff. I used to eat red meat all the time, but now I only have it once a week. It’s much harder to digest than chicken or fish.” I sense a small area of common ground.

Morgan praises her trainer, Scott, with whom she’s worked for six years. “She just knows her stuff.”She’s really good, and she pushes you hard, but you feel like you’re getting something out of it.” After my own workout in Los Angeles, I definitely got a clear sense of Scott’s famous emphasis on sleep recovery.

The next day, Morgan and I head to a soccer field in Orlando for our training session. It’s surrounded by palmetto palms and trees draped in Spanish moss. In fact, everything is dripping—it’s pouring rain. “This is so Portland right now,” Morgan says with a laugh (she played for the Portland Thorns for two years before moving to Orlando). Undeterred, she does twelve sprints up and down the field, then works on her dribbling and shooting. As the Olympics get closer, Morgan and her teammates will practice in the morning, hit the gym, rest, and train again.

After all that, Morgan is exhausted, but she still tries to teach me the basics of a sliding tackle (luckily, it’s a real grass field). I throw myself backward, then forward, which clearly amuses her. Even though she coaches kids at her soccer camp in Los Angeles, she’s never seen “form” like this.

There’s definitely room for improvement, but for the first time in fifty years, I can start to see a hint of the passion that has burned inside my father all these years.

The next time I run into David Beckham, it’s ringside with his stylishly dressed kids at his wife’s fall 2016 fashion show in Manhattan. He chuckles when he hears I’ve been training.

“How are those knees?” he asks me, a twinkle in his eye.

Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the article From the archives Vogues Hamish Bowles trains with soccer star Alex Morgan

General Background Questions

Q What is this article about
A Its a feature from Vogues archives where fashion editor Hamish Bowles spends a day training with professional soccer star Alex Morgan

Q Who is Hamish Bowles
A Hes a famous fashion journalist and editor at Vogue known for his love of vintage clothing and refined tastenot for sports

Q Who is Alex Morgan
A Shes a worldclass American soccer player Olympic gold medalist and World Cup champion

Q Why did Vogue pair a fashion editor with a soccer star
A For a fun contrastdriven story It shows a highfashion person stepping completely out of his comfort zone to experience elite athletic training

The Training Experience

Q What kind of training did Hamish do
A He went through a real soccer practice session with Alex Morgan including drills sprints and ball workdespite having zero soccer experience

Q Did Hamish actually play soccer well
A No He was clumsy out of breath and clearly out of his element Thats the charm of the storyhis honest struggle

Q What was Alex Morgans reaction to Hamish
A She was patient encouraging and professional She treated him like a real student giving tips and lightening the mood

Style Fashion Questions

Q What did Hamish wear to the training
A He wore his signature highfashion outfitthink tailored pieces luxury fabrics and designer accessoriescompletely impractical for soccer

Q Did he change into athletic gear
A Yes eventually he swapped his fancy clothes for actual soccer gear but the contrast was a big part of the story

Practical Deeper Questions

Q Whats the main lesson from this article
A Its a humorous and human look at what happens when someone from a completely different world tries something physically demanding It highlights humility the value of trying new things and respect for athletes skills

Q Is this article still relevant today
A Yes