Angel City Football Club conducted an Olympic sendoff celebration for captain and defender Ali Riley following Saturday evening’s 2-1 loss to NJ /NY Gotham FC at BMO Stadium that included three Maori dancers.
Riley will play for New Zealand, her father’s homeland. This will be the fifth Olympics Riley has played for the Football Ferns. She has also played in five FIFA Women’s World Cups and been the captain since 2017.
“It has been a hard one to get physically ready for as I’ve struggled with some injuries this year,” Riley said. “I feel grateful to the coaching staff at Angel City and the staff with the New Zealand team especially for believing in me and selecting me even though I haven’t been fully fit. The support they’ve given me every day has been incredible.”
The 36-year-old Riley was raised in Pacific Palisades and graduated from the Harvard-Westlake School in 2006.
Riley began her association with New Zealand Football when she was a high school senior and her father, a UCLA economics professor, sent an email and later a DVD to its women’s under-20 coach John Herdman.
“I went and tried out,” Riley said. “I still can’t believe that I flew to Australia to play with this group of under-20 players. I didn’t know a single person went for two weeks and then they invited me to join the under-20 team and then the next year I got called into the senior team for the 2007 World Cup.”
Riley played for Stanford from 2006-09, for FC Gold Pride in 2010 and the Western New York Flash in 2011 in the defunct Women’s Professional Soccer, for the Swedish first division team Rosengard from 2012-18 and in 2020 (it was known as LdB FC Malmo before December 2013), Chelsea of the English FA Women’s Super League in the 2018-19 season, and Germany’s Bayern Munich in the 2019-20 season.
Riley has played for Angel City since its inaugural 2022 season.