Abby Wambach on Exploring Some of Soccer’s Unbelievable History in ESPN+ Series ‘Abby’s Places’

thewrap.com:

Abby Wambach is uncovering more than you – or the legendary athlete herself – ever knew about soccer – or football as the rest of the world calls it – in “Abby’s Places” on ESPN+.The first episode form Part 2 of the two-time gold medalist and member of the 2015 Women’s World Cup-winning U.S.

team’s series dropped on Wednesday. The delightful program finds the soccer star doing a deep dive into the history of the game.

And that includes learning about its head-splitting medieval roots.“The things that I’ve learned about soccer/football are innumerable,” Wambach told TheWrap. “I mean, I pretend to be this expert, but like so many of the things that I showcase on my show is in fact stuff that I had learned in the process of prepping for these episodes.”And one of those things was that in the medieval period, as there were no sporting goods stores with a variety of multicolored soccer balls available for purchase, people played what came to be known as soccer with something else.“I was on the field in San Diego when I was shooting this episode with Landon [Donovan] and we were discussing the evolution of the ball.

And so back in medieval times, they used to use human skulls as the actual form of this ball,” Wambach adding she’s “more than grateful” to have started “playing soccer in a time where it was plastics and rubber in the form of balls that we were using.”Donovan isn’t the only star that crops up in the back half of Wambach’s series.