USWNT defender Gisele Thompson is finding her way alongside sister Alyssa

USWNT defender Gisele Thompson is finding her way alongside sister Alyssa

Before the U.S. women’s national team’s first of three games against Japan on Saturday, head coach Emma Hayes played “Back Together Again” by Roberta Flack featuring Donny Hathaway for Alyssa and Gisele Thompson.

It was an ode to the sisters’ reunion. Ever since the elder Alyssa split from their hometown team, Angel City FC in Los Angeles, to sign with Chelsea last year, the Thompsons, separated by 13 months, now only compete together when they’re in national team camp.

In the chorus of the duet is the line: “‘Cause you, you and I back together again // got the world in a spin.”

The USWNT claimed the first match of the three-part series with a 2-1 win at PayPal Park in San Jose, Calif. Neither the Thompson sisters nor the U.S. put Japan in a spin, per se. The champions of Asia demanded a full 90-minute performance from their opponents and came close to equalizing late in the game.

But at just 20 years old, with eight caps on the national team, Gisele is steadily proving herself worthy of a spot on the 2027 World Cup roster and a chance to be back together again with her sister on football’s biggest stage.

“I mean, how nice is that?” Hayes said. “You’ve got your sister playing in front of you, and they’re going to die for each other on the field.”

For this week’s “Three Words” …

Younger Thompson rising

Gisele earned her first call-up to senior national team camp in November 2024, but her first cap didn’t come until February 2025 at the SheBelieves Cup. As tempting as the storyline has always been to thrust the Thompson sisters into the spotlight as the faces and futures of the USWNT, once Hayes took charge, she set all players on developmental paths that haven’t always aligned with marketable narratives.

Gisele, now 20, wove in and out of senior camps last year, at times spending the international window with the under-23 squad. Even so, Hayes has been keen to bring her into the USWNT. When center-back Tierna Davidson sustained an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury in March 2025, Gisele was plucked from the younger team.

She did not play in last February’s U.S. loss to Japan, which makes her progression in that timeframe even more striking. During the 2026 SheBelieves Cup (in which Japan did not participate because they were competing in the Asian Cup), Hayes said she wanted to test Gisele’s endurance across multiple matches.

“Giselle knows that my goal with her is that I need her to be more durable,” Hayes said after the USWNT’s 1-0 victory over Canada in March. “So I told her, ‘You’re playing 90 minutes. Don’t look at me. You’re not coming off.’”

Japan is an even bigger test.

The U.S. relies on its full backs to have the pace and discernment to propel themselves into the attack without sacrificing their defensive responsibilities. Adding to the challenge of playing Japan was the fact that U.S. center-back Emily Sonnett was pulled from the lineup at the last minute due to an injury from the previous day’s training. Considering Hayes’ plan to utilize two primary rosters across the three fixtures — let’s call them Team A (which will play twice) and Team B — it’s telling that Gisele earned the start on Saturday in a lineup that looked mostly like Team A.

If you look at the Japan match as a continuation of Gisele’s growth from the SheBelieves Cup, her performance was a natural and positive progression. She has figured out how to account for her slight physical size when matching up against opponents, becoming an expert in spatial awareness. Captain Lindsey Heaps had the game-winning goal and Rose Lavelle the assist, but the counterattack that generated the play came from Gisele’s high press that forced a turnover for her sister Alyssa to pick up.

That’s the other factor. The Thompson sisters’ intuitive understanding of each other on the pitch can’t be taught.

At best, it can be manufactured from years of repetition, but with just four starts together (the most of any sister duo in the U.S. program’s history), Gisele and Alyssa already match and elevate each other’s shine. It’s only a matter of time before they are consistently putting the world in a spin like Flack and Hathaway sang about.

But Gisele’s game isn’t without its flaws.

“I think she’s got to develop a couple of things defensively,” Hayes said. “Like second half, she stepped out in situations where she’s got to stay in the back line, otherwise it’s a lot of running for Kennedy (Wesley), which it was.”

There was also an error (apparently due to a lapse in concentration) in the 61st minute when Gisele’s positioning during a Japanese counterattack kept striker (and Asian Cup Golden Boot winner) Riko Ueki onside as she dinked a header past U.S. goalkeeper Claudia Dickey, sullying their clean sheet.

“From a defensive perspective at the highest level, these are details that are going to really, really matter,” Hayes said. “I say that because I know she is not only capable of it, but she has to learn these things because when you play an opponent like Japan, if you watch the goal back, not getting pressure on the service is what’s required at the highest level.”

With two matches against Japan remaining, the competition for a starting left full-back spot has taken on a new complexion. Defenders Avery Patterson and Lilly Reale have been in and out of recent national team camps due to illness and injury, respectively. They will likely get minutes in this window, and Emily Fox’s starting status at right back is essentially secured. Hayes’ assessment on the opposite side has become even tougher, courtesy of Gisele.

Of the three, Patterson has the most comprehensive attacking qualities as a full back. Reale’s delivery into the box is exceptional. And Gisele, for all of her own skills, also knows exactly how to unlock Alyssa, an edge that no other defender — or player — could come close to. The Thompson sisters have lost just once in the four matches they’ve started together: a 2-1 friendly against Brazil that also took place at PayPal Park last April.

Singers Flack and Hathaway are not siblings, but they were both Howard University students when they met on the historically black college campus in the late 1960s. They became creative co-conspirators and have featured on several of each other’s projects, as well as an eponymous collaboration in 1972.

One of the tracks on that album is a cover of Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend.” Hayes didn’t play that one for the Thompson sisters, but it could also hint at the potential for their partnership on the USWNT.

“You just call out my name // And you know wherever I am // I’ll come running, running, running // To see you again.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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