Gotham FC’s Midge Purce Prepares for Return: ‘I think I’ll Be Significantly Better’ | OneFootball

It’s hard to imagine stopping Midge Purce. Fresh off an MVP performance in the 2023 National Women’s Soccer League Championship, the world-class forward was well on her way to helping NJ/NY Gotham FC to a repeat title and maybe even making the U.S. women’s national team roster for the 2024 Olympics. Nothing could get in her way.

Then, on March 24, 2024, an athlete’s worst nightmare—Purce tore her ACL in the team’s away match in Portland, an injury that would sideline her for over a year. Even now, she thinks about that moment and how it changed the trajectory of her career.

“It’s one of those things that you don’t really understand until you go through it,” Purce says. “It’s devastating to the athlete’s heart. It’s a competitor's tragedy for sure, and it’s a really powerful and rewarding journey back.”

“I can’t ignore that one of my close friends, teammates and valuable players from Gotham [Tierna Davidson] is going through it now,” Purce adds of Davidson, who tore her ACL earlier this month in an away game at Houston. “It’s kind of unfathomable to me, and she’s handling it so well.”

On March 11, nearly one year since her injury, Gotham FC announced Purce would be removed from the season-ending injury list. Over three matchdays, Purce has not yet made an appearance for Gotham this season. She’s continued to build up to minutes on the pitch, but all that could change in the team’s upcoming home match on Sunday as head coach Juan Carlos Amorós confirmed that the forward will be available for selection for the first time in 13 months.

“It’s a credit to herself, and to everyone that she's been working with here, with our medical team and high performance, all the coaches, but specifically to herself and her teammates; they've been outstanding,” Amorós told the media ahead of Sunday’s match. “It's been a very long road since the injury happened last year in Portland. She's worked extremely hard to be able to get to this point.”

Even as Purce prepares to step back on the pitch for the first time, she is well aware that her recovery journey is still a work in progress. She does not shy away from the realities of rehabbing an ACL tear.

“[Recovery] is still going, I’m still in it, I don’t know when I actually leave that recovery process,” Purce says. “For some, it’s when you end up playing again; for others, it's when you feel completely like yourself, but I don’t think I’ll ever be what I was … I think I’ll be significantly better.”

Coming back better

As Gotham FC entered the 2024 season, the team was newly stacked with superstars, including Davidson, Emily Sonnett, Crystal Dunn, Rose Lavelle,and returning players like Lynn Williams and Esther González. Instead of helping this freshly formed superteam in their eventual run to the semifinals, Purce watched from the sidelines, counting down the days until she could return.

“It’s definitely hard watching, especially when your team is playing beautiful football,” Purce says. “There were some times when my jaw dropped at some of the combinations, the decisions people were making in front of goal, individual efforts, I just wanted to be part of that so badly and contribute to that—so that sucked for sure, to be blunt.”

Throughout recovery, Purce was singularly focused on her return to the game, taking the milestones and setbacks as they came, but with her ultimate goal always front of mind.

A few months into her recovery, Purce had lunch with Ali Krieger, her former Gotham FC teammate. Krieger is no stranger to injuries, having overcome several, including a torn ACL, and offered up some words of encouragement for Purce’s recovery.

“She just casually said to me, ‘you’re going to be so much better than you were,’” Purce recalls. “I asked, ‘Why do you think that?’ And she said, ‘when I got injured, I came back better, and I wouldn’t have made any of the rosters that I ended up making if it wasn’t for my injury.’”

In that moment, Purce felt validated. She was fighting to find her own truth, and in that journey, she had come to the same conclusion.

“I had decided pretty early on that when you have an injury like this, you either come back worse, or you come back better, but never the same, and it’s up to you to decide which one of those you’re going to be,” Purce says. “I decided a long time ago I was going to come back better.”

New York is home

At the end of the 2024 season, for the first time in her life, Purce was a free agent. As she sees it, free agency affords athletes the ability to explore all the possibilities of their career. In conversations with clubs from around the world, Purce had one prevailing question at the front of her mind: Did the organization also feel that Purce would come back better from her injury?

“It’s a hard thing to find when a lot of people don’t know you individually and personality wise,” Purce says. “There are a lot of clubs that I talked to who told me they’d get me back to where I was, but whenever I heard that, I knew it wasn’t for me. I’m not trying to spend time convincing you that the game plan is something different. I need us to be on the same page.”

After a long offseason, Purce decided to re-sign with Gotham, a decision that excited fans and provided a spark for a team that saw significant turnover, losing nearly a dozen players following the 2024 season, including Williams, Dunn, Yazmeen Ryan, and Jenna Nighswonger.

Gotham’s style on the pitch played a significant factor in Purce’s decision. As she watched the team from the stands in 2024, she saw herself fitting perfectly into the system. She saw a club that was doing things on the ball that most other clubs weren’t. She saw sophistication in the final third, individual brilliance and combination play that inspired her to keep fighting through her recovery and get back, especially to play with some of the new players she barely got the chance to share minutes with last year.

“I love playing with Rose [Lavelle] and I think we will connect really, really well when we’re both out there together,” Purce says. “I also haven’t had the chance to play with Ella [Stevens] and I just rate her so highly. She’s so creative and good on the ball, I think we could do really special things together once that relationship is built.”

Though the club has often dominated games in possession and shots, Gotham has struggled to win games this season. With two draws and a loss over the first three matches, the club has only managed one goal and conceded three, leaving them 12th in the standings. For her teammates, Purce’s return is another much-needed piece of the puzzle, hopefully helping to turn strong performances into tangible results.

“I’ve played with Midge for a while, and she’s just such a dynamic player, and everyone knows that,” said Gotham midfielder Jaelin Howell. “Her main strength of going one-v-one to the end line, getting into the attack, her speed, I think that’s something we could really use. We’re really excited to get her back on the field, and I know she’s excited to help out the team.”

For Amorós as a coach, it is not just Purce’s ability to score, defend, and push the team on the pitch that Gotham has been missing, but also her positive attitude and ability to support her teammates to be the best versions of themselves on and off the pitch.

“The fact that she's back in for the team, for herself, first and foremost, but for everyone, is exciting news,” Amorós says. “She's a very special person, a very special player, she makes the difference in the final third. We’re very, very excited to have her back.”

As Purce prepares for her much-anticipated return to the pitch, she finds herself in a new headspace, one where she is grateful—grateful to be at a world class club playing with world class players.

“When you play this sport every year of your life for decades, it’s so easy to take it for granted,” she says. “It’s not until it gets taken away from you that you realize you miss it and love it so much. I just miss giving it my all. I miss being a competitor, I miss those final moments of the game where you just have to give that extra 10%. I can’t wait to finally get out there.”