Soccer can be cruel at times and no one knows it better than Mallory Swanson. 2023 began for the American forward like no other year as she hit the form of her life in the first few months. But in April, a patella tendon tear not only sidelined the USWNT star for 11 months but also shattered her dream of playing in the 2023 World Cup. Still, that doesn’t even count as the unluckiest part, as during those months on the sidelines, there was a moment that made Mal wonder, ‘Am I going to die?’

We hope no one else ever has to face such a situation, but how did it actually come to this for Swanson? Well, sadly, beyond 343 days of recuperation and 3 surgeries for her tear, there was also a stubborn infection in her knee that she had to heal. While it seemed something she could overcome at first, talk about things going wrong. “I’ve always felt like I could just bounce back from whatever happened to me,” shared Swanson on The Players Tribune.

“But when I got to the hospital, it started to sink in what recovery was going to look like. The World Cup was impossible. There was nothing anyone could do. It sucked. And so I had the surgery. And it went fine. But then about a week later I got really sick. Like …. really sick. My entire body felt awful and I could barely function,” shared the 26-year-old.

Questioning if she was even supposed to feel that ‘bad,’ Swanson was rushed back to the emergency room again, only to find out she had an infection in her knee. In fact, the infection was so severe that it kept ‘spreading and getting pretty serious’ that having another surgery was the only option to heal it.

“I remember sitting there in the hospital bed, listening to all this and thinking like, ‘Am… Am I going to die?’ It wasn’t clear to me what the infection was or exactly how I was supposed to be feeling — or when I’d be better,” concluded Swanson.

This indeed sounds scary and it’s good that Mallory could overcome such an ordeal. No wonder that after the Chicago Red Stars attacker had returned to the field near the end of 2023, she mentioned on her Instagram post how this injury changed her ‘whole perspective on life.’

“Life is a beautiful blessing. Health is a blessing. This game that I love is a blessing. And at the end of it all, I am more thankful to be able to do what I love again,” she wrote while expressing her gratitude to be able to play. In fact, Swanson even considers missing the 2023 World Cup a blessing in disguise.

Missing the 2023 World Cup was ‘God’s plan’, insists Mallory Swanson

Call her Drake but Mallory Swanson knew how she had to find the strength to accept her tough reality of not just dealing with the injury but also missing out on Vlatko Andonovski’s team. “It sucked and it was really hard, but I knew that like early on, I knew that God’s plan, that was supposed to happen,” admitted Swanson in another interview.

“And I think when I accepted that and kind of like shifted my mindset to have that outlook on it, it was actually like a huge blessing for me, to be able to miss it and then not be able to,” concluded the NWSL star. And no one can deny the fact that God indeed had another beautiful writing in the story of her life.

Talk about a bounce-back as 465 days later, she scored a brace for the USWNT during a friendly against South Korea in June 2024 and a month later, shining in the Paris Olympics by scoring four goals and helping her side win the gold medal!