Australia’s New Queen

Sam Kerr’s tone barely shifted. She had not, she mentioned, had time to consider it but. She had put it to the again of her thoughts. She had different issues on which to focus her consideration.

Her response muted to the purpose of deadpan, Kerr gave the distinct impression that the provide, to some the provide of a lifetime, was simply one other bullet level on a busy schedule, one other merchandise on her to-do checklist: Barcelona on the highway. Liverpool within the league. Westminster Abbey, to behave as Australia’s flag-bearer on the coronation of King Charles III. Everton away.

Of course, she mentioned, she was acutely aware that being handpicked by Australia’s prime minister to hold her nation’s flag on the coronation was an “amazing, amazing honor.” It would, she acknowledged, in all probability be the form of factor she would “tell my kids about in 10 or 15 years.”

It was simply that the concept of it didn’t faze her. Indeed, such was her insouciance that she admitted that her first intuition when supplied the function was to show it down. She thought she was too busy to attend a coronation. She assumed she would have a coaching session that day. She didn’t need to miss coaching merely to hold a flag.

Those that know her, although, would provide a supplementary clarification. Kerr has lengthy been thought to be probably the best participant in ladies’s soccer. She was, for a time, the highest-paid feminine participant on the planet.

Her teammates, colleagues and associates are unanimous in asserting that nothing that standing has introduced — the profile, the cash, the attendant strain — has left the slightest mark on her. “She comes across as real chill,” her Australia teammate Mary Fowler mentioned. “For any of the pressure that I may feel, it’s multiplied for her. So I’m just like: Props to her for being able to deal with that and come across as if it doesn’t affect her.”

That, she mentioned, is simply who Kerr is. It can be precisely who Australia wants her to be this month as she prepares to hold her nation on her shoulders as soon as once more on the Women’s World Cup.

At 29, Kerr has been a famous person for a while. Four years in the past, when Chelsea was making ready its bid to signal her, the membership’s administration needed to current a case for the funding. Both the price to accumulate her companies and her wage have been, on the time, substantial commitments by the requirements of ladies’s soccer.

Their case was that the cash was dwarfed by her marketability. Kerr was, by that stage, the face of the sportswear producer Nike in Australia. The risk of her signing was a driving power within the resolution by Optus Sport, the Australian broadcaster, to accumulate the rights to the Women’s Super League in England. Chelsea’s board was instructed to not contemplate the concept that Kerr was costly, however to see her signing as a cut price.

This summer season has borne that out. Kerr is the undisputed star, the principle occasion, the central character of not solely the most important Women’s World Cup in historical past, however a World Cup that Australia desperately hopes to win on house soil.

Her picture has been plastered throughout the nation. She is entrance and middle in all the event’s advertising campaigns. She has been depicted, alongside Princess Leia and John Lennon, in a mural within the hip Sydney suburb of Marrickville, and he or she is on the duvet of an up to date version of the FIFA online game. She has revealed an autobiography. She is, as her former teammate Kate Gill put it, the “poster person for the team.”

Seemingly each main news outlet has carried an account of her upbringing in Fremantle, simply outdoors Perth, in Western Australia, detailing her household’s wealthy sporting background — each her father and brother performed Australian Rules Football professionally — and her rise to prominence in a sport that she and her household initially “hated.”

“She is everywhere here,” mentioned Jon Marquard, the tv and media government who pieced collectively that Optus deal. “If there is an icon of this World Cup, it’s her. The position she is in is actually a pretty unusual thing. In terms of universal respect, I can’t think of anyone who is on a par with her.”

Her sporting friends in Australia, as a substitute, skew towards the historic, these whose legacies have been burnished just a bit by time: the runner Cathy Freeman, the swimmer Ian Thorpe, the tennis participant Ashleigh Barty. Her present friends, even within the conventional nationwide sports activities cricket, each codes of rugby and the A.F.L., don’t evaluate.

In a nation as consumed by sports activities as Australia — “sport to many Australians is life, and the rest a shadow,” because the essayist and thinker Donald Horne put it in 1964 — that could be a appreciable honor. Marquard places that broad recognition down not solely to Kerr’s achievements, notably outdoors Australia, however to her nature.

“We have historically had a bit of tall poppy syndrome,” he mentioned, referring to a scenario the place an individual’s success causes them to be resented or criticized. “There is a cultural ethos in Australia generally of not getting above yourself. Anyone who does tends not to be seen as authentic, and that is central to the culture.

“You can respect what someone like Nick Kyrgios has done, but he can be quite divisive. Whereas Sam has none of that hubris. She’s seen as genuine. The whole team is, really: You see them spending ages chatting with fans after games. Even with all of the demands on her, Sam has stayed quite grounded. It’s quite remarkable.”

Steph Catley, a defender for Australia, put it slightly extra succinctly in feedback to The Sydney Morning Herald. “She’s out there,” she mentioned. “She’s very just like: ‘Blah. I’m Sam. This is me.’ She’s still like that.”

That means, slightly than being intimidated by her standing — and the expectation now heaped on her shoulders — Kerr appears not solely to welcome it, however to encourage it. She has spoken, semi-regularly, of her hopes for this event and what it’s going to present her — and supply ladies’s soccer in Australia — with what she phrases a “Cathy Freeman moment,” a reference to the runner’s iconic victory within the 400 meters on the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

Guiding Australia to a World Cup win in the identical stadium, Kerr has advised, would have a lot the identical impression on a subsequent technology of Australians.

“If the pressure’s not there, it probably means it’s not that big of a game to be honest,” she mentioned this month. “Pressure is a privilege, and I love pressure. I love being in a moment where one or two moments can change the path of your career, really, and I think this World Cup is one of those moments.”

By the time Kerr allowed herself to consider her actual function at Westminster Abbey in May, she admitted that she did get just a bit nervous. All she needed to do was stroll a couple of paces in entrance of the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, however she needed to do it with the Australian flag on her shoulder and the eyes of the world upon her.

That was the primary coronation she attended this yr. Her hope is that there might be one other, and one wherein she can have a considerably extra outstanding function. The distinction is that this time she isn’t nervous in any respect.