Alexandra Popp: Germany and Wolfsburg’s goal-scoring machine in profile

Captain of the German nationwide workforce since 2019, Alexandra Popp has established herself as one of many stalwarts of the ladies’s recreation and the German nationwide facet since making her debut in 2010. A full-back-turned-forward, the 32-year-old shall be carrying her nation’s hopes on her shoulders on the Women’s World Cup as she appears to be like to avenge their heartbreaking defeat to England in Euro 2022 last final summer time.

Born in Witten, in western Germany, Popp started her fledgling soccer profession as a pupil at Gesamtschule Berger Feld in Gelsenkirchen. The elite footballing college trains gamers for the boys’s Bundesliga facet, Schalke, with Popp the one feminine pupil to attend the college courtesy of a particular allow.

Having additionally performed for mixed-gender groups at FC Silschede, Popp finally received her first style of senior soccer at Recklinghausen in the fourth tier of German soccer. Her keep there would final only one 12 months with the then 17-year-old becoming a member of top-flight Duisburg in 2008 below the tutelage of the present nationwide workforce supervisor, Martina Voss-Tecklenburg.

Popp would get pleasure from a vastly profitable first season, successful the UEFA Women’s Champions League and German Cup with Duisburg. She would observe that up the next season by retaining the German Cup with the season culminating in Popp making her debut for the senior nationwide workforce in 2010.

After two additional years, Popp transferred to Wolfsburg in 2012 the place she stays immediately. Much like her debut season at Duisburg, Popp would hit the bottom operating at Wolfsburg with a well-known treble-winning marketing campaign that noticed her facet seize the UEFA Women’s Champions League, Frauen-Bundesliga and German Cup.

Her profession at Wolfsburg went from power to power as Popp guided her facet to a profitable defence of the UEFA Women’s Champions League and Frauen-Bundesliga in the 2013-14 season.

Whilst her Wolfsburg facet might not have tasted European glory since that 2014 season, they’ve been the dominant pressure in home German ladies’s soccer together with her facet successful the German Cup for nine-straight seasons whereas additionally successful the Frauen-Bundesliga on 5 events.

For the nationwide workforce, Popp has additionally been a stalwart since her debut in 2010, scoring 62 objectives in 128 appearances. Despite lacking the ultimate by means of damage, Popp scored eight objectives as Germany went on to retain the Euros in 2013.

Having misplaced in the semi-finals of the 2015 World Cup, the nationwide facet would go on to assert gold on the 2016 Rio Olympics. In 2019, Popp would change into captain of the nationwide facet forward of the World Cup the place they fell to Sweeden in the quarter-finals.

A heartbreaking damage in the warm-up for final 12 months’s Euros finals prevented Popp from enjoying as England defeated Germany in additional time.