2019 Royals Player Profiles: Rachel Corsie

Rachel Corsie had a whirlwind of a 2019 season. From being a mainstay for Utah Royals FC on the backline to captaining her country at their first-ever World Cup, it was a big year for her.

Corsie has been a dominant force on Utah’s backline since day 1 of the club. Despite missing a good chunk of the summer for the World Cup, Corsie still saw 19 starts and played 1,710 minutes for her club in 2019.

Although Scotland failed to escape their group in the 2019 World Cup, Corsie did have the honor of captaining her side to their first-ever World Cup. The Scotland Women’s National Team were drawn into a very difficult group, with eventual fourth-place finishers England, Japan, and Argentina. It was a very difficult group to escape, and despite not seeing wins, Scotland played a good tournament considering the difficulty of their opponents.

Before the World Cup, Corsie started and played the whole 90 minutes in Utah’s first five games of the season. In these matches, Utah allowed just three goals and got three shutouts. It was a really strong start to the 2019 season, largely thanks to the defensive strength as three of those results were 1-0.

After returning home from the World Cup, Corsie did struggle just a little to find her strength again. Partially because her teammate Becky Sauerbrunn remained gone with the USWNT for their World Cup Victory celebrations, the same strength didn’t seem to remain post-World Cup.

After her return, Utah took a devastating loss to Sky Blue FC, who had just five wins in their final 14 matches of the season. In this time, Utah also had a -1 goal differential. Things just didn’t seem to be clicking defensively for Utah.

Corsie didn’t have her best campaign, but she still was an important part of the Utah team. With a 75% success rate on tackles and an 86% pass completion rate, Corsie did her part. There were just some adjustments after the World Cup that caused Utah to struggle to rebound back into how they started their season so strong.