The Big Interview: Lorrie Fair

Lorrie Fair had amassed 120 caps for the USA, won a World Cup and an Olympic gold medal. So why did she rock up at Chelsea for a season at the end of her career?

This interview is part of a new series speaking to foreign players who played in England before the creation of the Women’s Super League. Their experiences, memories and the influence player and league had on each other in a period the women’s game was very much still growing…

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Lorrie Fair playing for Chelsea against Doncaster Rovers Belles in 2008

If a player like Lorrie Fair arrived at a club like Chelsea in 2023, the fanfare would be like little the women’s game has seen before.

With 120 caps for the USA, Fair was a legend of her era, having been the youngest player on the team which won the World Cup in 1999 and picking up a silver medal at the 2000 Olympics and gold four years later in Athens.

But in 2008, despite her status as she entered the twilight years of her career, women’s football wasn’t really on the map in England and the Women’s Super League era was still three years away from its start.

Crowds were less than modest, financial backing was almost non-existent – even at Chelsea – despite the fact the Blues were solid in mid-table under the guidance of manager Shaun Gore, who had taken over the team himself after years as the club’s head of football in the community.

So, how did a legend from the best team in the world, who had amassed over 100 caps across a 10-year period for her national team across the pond, end up in west London?

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“Chelsea were interested in me for a couple of reasons,” Fair recalls. “One was they were actively trying to grow their US footprint at the time. They wanted a US strategy and they were also trying to further support their women’s team.”

15 years on, Fair’s memory of how she first came to be involved is sketchy, but she had been an ambassador for the club in the USA for some time before the actual idea of playing for the team was mooted.

She namechecks Charlie Stillitano, one of the biggest sports executives in the USA as someone who may have been at the heart of it as she had done clinics for one of his companies, with trips to the USA for big Premier League becoming more and popular during the 2000s.

“England at the time was just still so, so incredibly reluctant to welcome women’s soccer in any shape or form…”

 “I had done a few appearances here in the US. They were the like ‘what would you think about going over and playing?’ And I’m like ‘Sureeeeeeee’.

“My career was kind of coming to a close, so the opportunity to also be a club ambassador and work on the strategy side for their US stuff, it mixed a little bit of playing with my post-career goals.

“I went over truly with the idea of yes, I was going over to bring some more exposure to the women’s side, play for the team, but also for me to get some experience behind the scenes and see where my heart kind of followed in terms of a working career, because I knew my playing career was coming to end.”