ST.-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE, France — There is an American soccer star living in this charming city just outside Paris, a striker from Colorado who rejected a college scholarship offer, moved to Europe to join a top professional team and immediately began scoring goals in bunches.
It is, in many ways, exactly the path that Jurgen Klinsmann, the United States men’s national team coach, believes will raise the level of the American game.
But for this American, Lindsey Horan, it is not so simple. Klinsmann is concerned with the paths of male players. The track to the national team for female players is, at the moment, significantly different.
In 2012, Horan, then 18, turned down a scholarship offer from the University of North Carolina in favor of a life that boys that age can still only fantasize about: She turned pro, joined Paris St.-Germain, grabbed a regular starting spot and played in the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
Horan has done so well that she just signed another two-year contract with P.S.G., ensuring that she will continue to live her dream but also that she will remain in Paris while the United States national team tries to qualify for next summer’s Women’s World Cup. If she were a man, this arrangement would be unquestionably a good thing; as a woman on a quest to make an impact internationally, however, Horan may actually be hindered because she plays in Paris instead of, say, Portland.
If that seems strange, consider that of the 20 players on the United States roster for the 2015 World Cup regional qualifying tournament that began Wednesday, all 20 played or are playing college soccer, and none currently play abroad. A few, like Megan Rapinoe, have played in Europe, but generally only after at least establishing themselves in the United States.
Horan, 20, would not be a lock to make the World Cup team even if she were living in the United States — not while the team still has scorers like Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan and Sydney Leroux — but Jill Ellis, the coach of the women’s national team, acknowledged in a recent interview that an on-the-cusp player like Horan would probably be at a disadvantage if she played abroad because of the nature of the women’s national team.
Unlike the men’s team, which gathers sporadically throughout the year during mandated international breaks from club soccer, the women’s team is closer to a full-time operation. Because the season of the fledgling National Women’s Soccer League is already over (and the next one will not begin until the spring), U.S. Soccer is doing its best to get the women’s team together as frequently as possible between now and the World Cup. After this month’s qualifying tournament, the team will travel to a tournament in Brazil. It is expected to tour Europe early next year.
Playing in France, where the season runs from September to May, means that Horan, who has scored six goals in five games for P.S.G. this season, is not necessarily available if her country calls.
In the current structure, that matters. And it is why Ellis, while not hesitating to praise Horan’s skill and passion and obvious prowess in front of the goal, said that when another potential national team player recently approached her for her thoughts on playing in Europe during the run-up to the World Cup, Ellis discouraged it.
“The amount of time that we’re going to be together in prep for this World Cup is significant,” Ellis said, recalling what she told the player. “I said to her: ‘Look, we’re preparing for the biggest tournament, and I’m going to need you all the time. I’m going to need to see you.’ ”
Ellis also said Horan’s new contract with P.S.G. would affect her beyond this World Cup cycle. “I’ll be honest: She re-signed with P.S.G., and we hadn’t had a conversation about it,” Ellis said. “Timing was a bit of an issue.”
Ellis added that while the N.W.S.L. was still developing, she felt its level of play might be more consistent than that in France. P.S.G. is among the top teams in the French league, and it faces difficult opponents in the Champions League, but there is a noticeable drop-off from the best teams in Europe to those that struggle. That is why clubs like P.S.G. and Lyon, where Rapinoe used to play, generally have a slew of blowout victories on their schedules every season.
All those factors together, Ellis said, leave Horan in a delicate situation.
“Would being here and being able to come in to all our events help her?” Ellis said. “Yes. Will it be challenging this way? Yes.”
Horan knows that she chose to break from the norm but remains hopeful that her play will allow her to stand out. Yael Averbuch, an occasional national team player who went to North Carolina and has played in the United States professional leagues as well as leagues abroad, said she respected Horan’s decision to try a different way.
“Maybe Europe is the best place for a player to develop in the long run, which is true for certain players and not others,” Averbuch, who is playing for a club in Cyprus, said in an email. “And for a player who is not a veteran of the U.S.W.N.T., that can mean taking yourself off the radar a bit.”
Regardless of the ramifications, playing abroad was what Horan always wanted; she raised the issue with her parents when she was as young as 10, and in 2011 she performed so well in a tryout with Lyon that the club offered her a contract on the spot.
“It was really tempting because it was everything I wanted, but we decided that it would be better if I finished high school,” Horan said.
A year later, Lyon told her it did not have space on its roster for another foreign player. Instead, she connected with P.S.G., which, having only watched video of her play, offered her a contract said to be worth at least six figures.
Horan and her family knew the stakes of accepting the offer: It would mean walking away from a college scholarship and also mean turning down a chance to play for the United States in that year’s under-20 World Cup because P.S.G. wanted Horan to have surgery to repair a knee injury.
“People still ask me, How could you let your daughter do that?” Horan’s mother, Linda, said in a telephone interview. “I still get that question now. And for 99 percent of kids, I would agree with that way of thinking. But Lindsey would not have been happy sitting in a classroom. She is living her dream. Ever since she was 5, she’s been saying she wanted to be a professional soccer player. Now, she is.”
The transition to living on her own abroad was not always smooth, and Lindsey Horan’s emotions were tested: The under-20 national team won the World Cup without her, and North Carolina won the national championship.
“It was hard not to have second thoughts,” Horan said. “It was like all the things I was missing were amazing.”
Soon, though, things got easier. Her French began to improve. She made friends on the team and scored 17 goals in her first season.
By her second year, Horan was more settled. Another American, Tobin Heath, joined P.S.G. for the season, and she and Horan were roommates.
When it came time for Horan to return to France after a vacation in Colorado this summer, “it was like I was really excited to get back, not just for the soccer,” she said. “This is where I wanted to be.”
She felt that way even though Heath was gone, having returned to play in the N.W.S.L. with others eager to be on the radar of Ellis.
Horan said she recognized that the current setup made it difficult for the best female Americans to play abroad and for the national team, but she nonetheless hopes that there might be a day when other players consider following her lead.
“The way things are with women’s soccer, it’s not like I expect tons of women to do what I did,” Horan said. “But I do think that, for some people, a different path can absolutely be the right one.”