Matt Turner Isn’t Done Proving Himself

It’s a sunny September afternoon, and Matt Turner is lounging on a hotel bed in St. Louis, preparing for an international friendly against Uzbekistan. The occasion will mark head coach Gregg Berhalter’s first game back in charge of the U.S. men’s national team since the World Cup in Qatar, when Turner impressed as the country’s starting goalkeeper. Above the bed’s headboard is black-and-white wallpaper featuring the layout of Busch Stadium. Out the room’s window, Turner has a clear view of the real thing, where earlier this summer, during a celebrity batting practice session, he stepped into the cage and cranked four home runs, amazing Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado. “The Cards aren’t even here,” Turner remarks about their current road trip, with a tinge of disappointment.

In an alternate reality, Turner could have been a professional baseball player. He grew up in Park Ridge, New Jersey, about 30 miles from Manhattan, and envisioned himself as a future Yankees shortstop. He played Little League and travel ball throughout middle school, but like most athletic kids, he involved himself in a variety of team sports, “basically anything with a ball, puck, or stick,” his father, Stu, says. “But baseball was what came most naturally to him.”

Turner hasn’t played baseball seriously since he was a junior in high school, though. So after casually crushing homers in front of an eight-time All-Star, the 29-year-old might strike you as someone for whom sports in general come naturally. But they didn’t. At least, soccer certainly didn’t.

For that reason, Turner always carries around an ornament in his backpack. It’s a photo of him and his wife, Ashley, from a few years ago, when they were still dating. Turner calls it his “go-to reminder.” Every week, before changing into his kit and lacing up his cleats, he looks at the trinket and remembers to be grateful. The picture inside was taken at the end of 2020. At the time, Turner was struggling mentally, putting pressure on himself to perform consistently with the New England Revolution. His confidence had slipped. He wanted so desperately to be a part of the USMNT and fulfill a longtime goal of playing in the World Cup. The pandemic-interrupted Major League Soccer season hadn’t helped. “I wasn’t playing as well as I thought I should be playing,” he says, “and I felt like I was losing my grip on a lot of things I wanted to accomplish.”

Turner had been there before—unsure of his future. He was unsure in high school, when he played organized soccer for the first time. Or when he was a walk-on at Fairfield University, a small Division I program, where he made a gaffe in net so unthinkable it nearly drove him out of the sport. Or near the end of college, when he wasn’t drafted and considered pivoting to a career in finance. And then in New England, where he spent two years waiting for an opportunity to start. At every juncture in his career, Turner had been the underdog, the third option, the other guy, biding his time.

“He’s always faced a bit of an uphill battle,” Stu says.

So each time Turner unzips his bag and pulls out the ornament, all of those memories rush back. The insecurities, the unknowns. But a lot happened in the three years since that photo: a rapid international ascent he still struggles to comprehend. “I think about where I was at that moment, and I say to myself, ‘Imagine telling that guy that this is where he’s at right now,’” Turner says. “He might not believe it.”

Indeed, Turner’s acceleration into stardom verges on disbelief. After regrouping and committing to the 2021 MLS season, he was named the league’s best goalkeeper, guiding the Revolution to its first Supporters’ Shield title. A year later, the Premier League came calling, as Arsenal—a powerhouse in the most competitive soccer division in the world—signed him as a backup. Even though he rode the bench, the elite-level training experience proved invaluable. After dominating the position in numerous World Cup qualifiers, Turner won the USMNT starting job for the 2022 tournament, leading the team to the round of 16 in Qatar last November.

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Now, Turner finds himself starting on the club level as well. In August, he completed a transfer to Nottingham Forest, a recently promoted Premier League side with a famous history. Through 10 games this season, Turner has kept Forest in every contest. He’s shown flashes of brilliance, and yes, he’s made mistakes, but he’s become one of the few American goalkeepers to play in legendary grounds like Anfield and Old Trafford. On top of it all, he has navigated marital life with Ashley while raising their toddler, Easton, and newborn daughter, Everley, more than 3,000 miles from his childhood home. The pace of the past few months hasn’t allowed him much time to process the journey.

“It’s been crazy,” he says. “I really like to set long-term goals and write things down. But for the time being, I’m way more focused on the day by day.”

Turner’s unlikely story might not be unique—a handful of American goalkeepers have found success playing overseas and representing their country in the World Cup. But his delayed entry into the sport, his persistent developmental roadblocks, and his unrelenting pursuit to improve have set him apart from his peers.

The battle now is finding balance, living in the moment without letting it slip away. The photo helps. It keeps him grounded. But he doesn’t dwell on the past like he used to. “I’m ready for Act 2 or Act 3 of the play of my life,” he says, whatever that might be. “I’m the type of person who always feels like I want to continue to prove myself. Maybe to a fault.”

Soccer was originally just a tool for exercise. After enrolling at St. Joseph Regional High School and committing to baseball in the spring and basketball in the winter, Turner wanted to keep in shape during the fall. His wiry 5-foot-3 frame wasn’t suited for football, so he tried out for the freshman soccer team instead.

Turner had mostly played the sport recreationally, occasionally subbing in at goal during his older sister’s scrimmages. After the first day of tryouts, he “quickly realized he did not have the foot skills required to play the field,” Stu says. The next day, taking his sister’s old gloves, Turner switched to goalkeeper, and thanks to a fluke injury to another keeper, he earned a spot. He quickly let his hand-eye coordination take over. “Because he was so raw and new at it, he just saw constant improvement and constant improvement,” Stu says.

His love affair with soccer didn’t blossom until the summer before his junior year. Turner remembers sitting on his parents’ basement L-shaped couch with his buddies, glued to the TV, watching the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. After absorbing each slate of games, he’d take his friends to the local park to attempt to mimic the goals and set pieces they’d seen. “They were young and didn’t have skills and would have a great time trying to recreate whatever it was, over and over,” Stu says. The international tournament had hooked Turner, who began watching YouTube videos of goalkeeping drills to feed his interest.

After making the varsity team as a junior, he shot up in size and decided to put all his energy into soccer. Eventually, he passed on his final season of baseball to keep training. The news was a bit surprising to Stu and his wife, Cindy. “We had very mixed emotions,” Stu recalls. “He had a Don Mattingly swing.” Turner’s baseball coach mostly used him as a utility player, plugging him in throughout the infield and then occasionally pushing him onto the mound to drop his knuckleball. “His coach would throw him in, bases loaded, nobody out, we’re holding on to a one-run lead,” Stu says. “Matt, come in and get us out of this jam.” But Turner had caught the goalkeeping bug and set his sights on playing in college.

Of course, as a late bloomer, Turner wasn’t on the radar of many universities. He spent the early portion of his senior year posting videos to recruiting websites and emailing soccer coaches. Stu estimates they sent letters to at least a couple of hundred schools, ranging from D-I to D-III. “It was a family effort,” he says. “He was determined that we all try to find him a place to play soccer.” Not many schools got back to them, and those that did showed little interest. Turner remembers a D-III coach scouting one of his state playoff games. “By halftime, he left, never to be heard from again,” Turner says.

Turner was eventually accepted to Fairfield University in Connecticut, but at that point, he was mostly thinking about his academic future—what he would major in. Still, he figured he’d send an email to the athletics department, letting them know he would be playing in a Thanksgiving tournament on Long Island. Maybe a coach could come watch him. “There were three different tiers in that tournament, and we were going to go see a player that was on our radar,” says Fairfield goalkeeper coach Javier Decima. “Then we ended up going to Matt’s game.” According to Decima, Turner was still raw, but he liked his athleticism. He invited the 17-year-old to attend a one-day ID camp in January, a way for coaches to evaluate how young athletes might handle coaching and a collegiate environment. Decima was immediately impressed. “The first day he came in, the confidence, the handshake, the body posture,” he says. “He was a walk-on, but you see kids on scholarship, and they don’t even shake your hand.”

A couple of days later, Turner got his first official offer. “We knew he was someone we would have to develop,” Decima says. “He wasn’t a final product.”

As a freshman in 2012, Turner would back up Michael O’Keeffe, a senior who had played for New Zealand in that summer’s Olympics. Everyone was pleased about the situation. “He could learn from Michael and really absorb everything,” Stu says. “And then when he graduates, Matt’s sophomore year will, in theory, be his time to start.” Over the next year, Turner adapted well to Fairfield’s direct offensive system. “We worked tremendously all through the spring with double sessions because his kicking wasn’t accurate,” Decima says. “Those kinds of things we developed here.” That summer, Stu leveraged some connections with his multinational company, Unilever, and got his son into a Brazilian soccer academy about a 90-minute drive outside São Paulo to train with international competition. “It was a wonderful experience,” Stu says.

After returning to the States for his sophomore season, Turner discovered that Fairfield had offered English goalkeeper Joe Martin a scholarship. It wasn’t long before Martin was named the starter. “At that point, we started getting the feeling like this is a dog-eat-dog world,” Stu says. “There’s no guarantee of anything in any sport.”

Turner got his first opportunity in goal halfway through the 2013 season. Fairfield was on the road against Iona. He subbed in at halftime. Martin had suffered a hip flexor injury, and head coach Carl Rees needed Turner to protect a 1-0 lead. The young keeper started well. “He came in for a cross, made a good save. It was a fresh sense that he was going to be fantastic,” Decima remembers. Then, about 30 minutes into his debut, he made the biggest blunder of his green career.

Iona’s Jordan Scarlett found himself in space and blasted a 30-yard stinger directly at Turner. The ball hit the top of the crossbar and shot straight up. Turner spun around, waiting for it to drop, but as he jumped to grab it, the ball slipped through his fingers, hit him in the face, and caromed into the back of the net. Iona fans screamed in delight. Turner lay on his belly, his hands covering his face. A delayed train horn echoed through the PA system, adding an extra insult. Fairfield eventually lost 2-1.

Shortly after, the highlight, which Turner likened to Martin Dubravka’s mistake against Spain in the Euros, reached the internet and landed him at the top of SportsCenter’s “Not Top 10.” He couldn’t avoid the clip on social media for months. His first chance to prove himself at the collegiate level had gone viral and landed him in the same breath as the Mark Sanchez butt fumble. “My first thought was his mental health was going to suffer,” Decima says. Turner’s coaching staff decided to give him a vote of confidence. The next week, in a hotel lobby before a game against Niagara, Decima told Turner they planned to start him again. “He’s like, ‘Listen, Javi, I’m in the mindset that I don’t feel comfortable to actually start,’” Decima says.

Turner didn’t play for the rest of the season. “As a head coach, I have a duty of care to do what’s in his best interest,” Rees says. “It was a collaborative decision.”

Turner spent the winter pondering his next move. He considered transferring. He started to check out. “I’m a very cerebral, analytical person,” Turner says. “I was putting too much pressure on myself to be so perfect, and it was hard for me to laugh it off.” He talked with his parents; they encouraged him to look at the situation holistically. “The discussion we had was: Just because you move to another school doesn’t mean it’s going to be a better playing situation,” Stu says. “You could hate the school and hate the people. The grass isn’t always greener.” Turner agreed. He loved the area, his friends, his classes. He recommitted in the spring, eager to forge ahead.

That summer, while school was on break, Turner tried out for a number of teams in the USL Premier Development League (now called USL League Two). Nobody wanted him. Eventually, Rees and Decima called up Jeff Matteo, a former MLS player who coached the Jersey Express, and asked whether he had any room left on his squad. Matteo already had two strong goalies on the roster, including Alex Kapp, who went on to play in MLS, but he offered Turner a chance to try out during the preseason. Wary of Turner’s fragile state of mind, Matteo wanted to clear the air about his gaffe. “I told him, ‘At some point, people are going to forget about this. You can’t judge your career on one moment,’” Matteo says. “And he turned it into a positive thing and a driving force for himself.”

Still, as at every stop thus far, Turner entered the preseason as a third-stringer. Under the guidance of former MLS goalkeeper Bill Gaudette, Turner aimed to turn heads again. As the team practiced and scrimmaged several days a week, Turner went to work. “He really took information and processed it,” Gaudette says. “He was very even-keeled, and every day he got better and more confident.”

Then, an opportunity arose. Both goalies ahead of him sustained injuries in the early season. Turner was far from the finished article, but he had made improvements in his game, and he had grown to 6-foot-3. “He definitely had to get better with his feet and coming out on crosses,” Matteo remembers, but “his shot stopping had always been spot-on.” He and Gaudette agreed that Turner was ready. Over the next couple of months, Turner’s command in the box exploded. By the end of the season, Jersey Express had won the Eastern Conference and advanced to the national semifinals. Matteo told him he had all the tools to play professionally if he wanted to take that path.

“They were the first people to really tell me that they thought I was good enough to turn around and play in MLS,” Turner says. “It just gave me so much confidence, and I felt like I was 7 feet tall every time I stepped out onto the field that year.”

The summer became a turning point. Turner had refined his footwork, regained his focus, and remembered his passion for the sport. In the preseason of his junior year, Turner kept up the momentum: He won the starting job at Fairfield, then cemented his coaches’ belief in him by collecting 13 clean sheets over 19 games.

In less than a year, he’d changed his entire outlook on the sport and his future. “He was able to go through that patch and reset himself,” Decima says. “I just think he knew he had people behind him that really believed in him.”

Midway through his senior year of college, Turner arrived at another crossroads. He’d finished his last season with more strong play, notching 73 saves and seven shutouts in 18 games. But despite two productive years, he didn’t receive an invitation to the MLS combine and went undrafted in January. The snub was frustrating. At the very least, he thought, he could use his ancestry to apply for Lithuanian citizenship and keep playing overseas. “Maybe he just roams around Europe and tries to hook on with a couple teams and trudge his way up the ranks,” Stu remembers thinking. It seemed like a long shot.

After all, Turner had just earned a spot in General Electric’s financial management leadership program, a coveted position among Fairfield’s finance majors. Despite his talent on the field, Turner had always been realistic about his chances of playing professionally. When he was a junior, he’d told a Fairfield video team that he saw himself as an investment banker in five years. The GE job seemed like a viable path. “There’s no guarantees in life, but if I did well in that job, I was set for life,” Turner says. “I could work for that company for 30 years, and I would be able to live a really great, successful, comfortable family life. Whatever I wanted.”

But in February 2016, sports agent and Fairfield alum Justin Thompson offered him a lifeline to play in MLS. At the request of Turner’s coaching staff, Thompson reached out to New England Revolution goalkeeper coach and longtime friend Remi Roy. “He asked me to watch some video and see if it was worth him representing [Matt],” Roy says. “We were looking for a third goalkeeper at the time. He definitely had enough qualities that I felt like it was worth bringing him into the preseason.” Now, Turner had a choice: give soccer one more shot, or finish out his last semester.

Turner struggled with the decision. Some Fairfield faculty members encouraged him to complete his degree that spring, and their opinions weighed on him. But he wanted more input. He arranged an appointment with assistant dean Dawn DeBiase. She didn’t know Turner well, but she couldn’t believe his predicament. “I think I looked at him, and there were expletives said,” she laughs. “I just said, ‘Have you lost your mind? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’” DeBiase had never been that candid when speaking with students seeking advice. Turner was a bit stunned. “Matt,” she said, “we’ll figure it out.”

Turner’s decision started to crystallize. He kept thinking of his father’s advice: “You don’t want to be my age and always wonder, ‘What if?’” Before long, he found himself in Arizona for the Revolution’s preseason. Soon after, the club signed him to a contract. “I said to Matt, ‘You have to get as many professional games in as possible,’” Roy says. So the team brokered a deal with the Richmond Kickers of the lower-tier USL to let Turner practice in New England during the week and fly to Virginia for Saturday games. “That was the best scenario we could do to get him some experience, some exposure to a higher level than college,” Roy says.

As he waited for a chance to play in New England, Turner finished his last five courses online and received his degree. All the while, his shot stopping continued to improve. “He made saves that even players in the league for 10 years weren’t making,” Roy says. When Turner didn’t have to be in Richmond, he went in goal for the Revolution’s pregame warm-ups and looked like the best goalkeeper on the team. “The players would ask me not to put him in because they couldn’t score. He would hurt their confidence before the game,” Roy says. “I was having to tell Matt, ‘Maybe let a goal in here or there.’”

Eventually, in 2018, Turner got his first start with New England under head coach Brad Friedel, an esteemed American goalkeeper who had spent 18 years in the Premier League. Turner maintained the starting role for the majority of the season, earning Friedel’s trust with his technical skills. “He saw something in Matt that maybe a coach who wasn’t a goalkeeper might not have seen,” Stu says. Over the next few years, Turner battled through coaching turnover and distinguished himself as the team’s primary goalkeeper. Over his 102 career MLS starts, Turner ranked among the league’s top goalkeepers in saves percentage (75.6) and goals against average (1.09).

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In January 2021, Turner signed a new contract with the Revs and got the call-up to start for the USMNT against Trinidad and Tobago; that night, he became the first USMNT goalkeeper to save a penalty in his international debut. Later that year, he kept five clean sheets in six matches, winning Golden Glove and Best XI honors en route to the U.S.’s CONCACAF Gold Cup title.

“He’s like a sponge. He knew he had to learn and reach certain goals much faster than other people,” Roy says. “He didn’t have the big college, that international youth experience that others had. He used that as motivation, not as a knock against him.”

After scouting his stellar play throughout 2021, which included an All-Star Game MVP award, Arsenal came calling. Turner was ready for the next level. Again, he would enter in a backup role, but the opportunity to train with one of the Premier League’s “Big Six” was too good to pass up. “The old adage is ‘If you can’t do it overseas, then you’re not really doing it,’” Gaudette says. “You put on that Arsenal jersey every day, you’re playing against some of the [world’s] best 22 players on your training squad. You’re only going to get better.”

The move was a lifestyle change. After Easton was born at the end of June 2022, Turner and Ashley moved to the outskirts of London. “We actually had sheep in our backyard,” he says. The decision to move abroad to a higher-profile league paid dividends, though. A few months later, Berhalter named Turner the USMNT’s starting goalkeeper for the World Cup. The kid who reenacted goals 12 years earlier would have a chance at the real thing. Despite hardly receiving any proper game time through the early fall, Turner rose to the challenge. In four matches, he allowed just four goals and posted two clean sheets against Iran and England, one of the sport’s superpowers. “You sort of pinch yourself,” Stu says. “Is that really him on television? Is this really my kid?”

Turner says he felt really good after Qatar. “I felt like I showed the world who I am,” he says. “I showed what I could offer in big games and important moments.” Then he started thinking about the next move. “You wait a couple months, and that all fades pretty quickly.” After returning to London and continuing to push for a starting spot, he made the most of his limited opportunities in the FA Cup and Europa League, side competitions in which he turned in four clean sheets in seven appearances. Turner became a popular figure in the locker room. But it became clear that on the depth chart he wouldn’t eclipse Aaron Ramsdale for weekly Premier League appearances. Turner wanted to make an impact. “I wanted to be competing, and I wasn’t,” he says. “And I realized how much that element meant to me—actually being on the field.”

Despite the bench time, his year in London facing elite competition kept his momentum going during international play this past summer. He earned the Best Goalkeeper Award after the U.S. won the CONCACAF Nations League and then guided the team to the Gold Cup semifinals after saving two penalty kicks against Canada. “I felt like I had a say in a lot of the results. And I felt like people listened to me and respected me and sought out my advice,” Turner says. He was becoming not just a regular starter for his country, but also a locker room leader.

“He’s become that player for the national team that we can all rely on,” says USMNT defender Auston Trusty. “He’s the go-to guy.”

In early August, Turner suited up for Arsenal one last time. That day, the Gunners beat Premier League champions Manchester City on penalty kicks to win the Community Shield. Ramsdale sought out Turner after the game and embraced him, knowing his rival turned friend would be leaving. Arsenal soon brought in David Raya, another top goalie, and granted Turner a transfer to Nottingham Forest. “This is the right opportunity for me,” Turner says of his thinking. A week later, after signing his contract at Forest, he was back in goal at Emirates Stadium, this time as an opponent. “I think the lines were a bit blurred,” he laughs. “But I was happy that was the first game because I could move past it and then just focus on myself, my new team, and establishing myself in a new city with my family.”

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Over the past few months, Turner has been adapting. After Everley was born in mid-September, Ashley and the kids joined him in Nottingham, which he describes as a college town. Unlike his previous flat outside London, which required lots of driving to get to places, he loves that he can walk wherever he needs to. “It’s a great family city,” he says. “The people love the team, they want to see you give your all, and that’s what I do. I’ve felt really welcomed by the team and the fans and the coaching staff. It just feels like a really good fit for me right now.”

Under head coach Steve Cooper, Turner has acquitted himself nicely at City Ground, allowing a respectable 15 goals through 10 matches for a team expected to fight relegation. He’s made his share of errors, nearly drawing a penalty against Brentford in early October and charging out of the box last week against Liverpool, which led to a goal. But his biggest accomplishment at Forest thus far came at the beginning of September, when he posted his first Premier League clean sheet. The tight 1-0 win came on the road against Chelsea, one of England’s biggest clubs. “It meant a lot,” he says. “We had aspirations as a club of not just sustainability, but to be an ambitious club in the Prem, so those are the kind of games that you need to be able to go away from home and win.”

In some ways, this is all new territory for Turner. After years of fighting to be “the guy,” he’s now attempting to stay the guy. “I’ve always had a year or two where I kind of needed to learn the ropes and understand what it takes,” Turner says. “Then I’m able to really flourish and grow and adapt.” He doesn’t have that leash anymore. Now he’s a starter from the jump, but not long after he signed, Forest signed Greek goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos, a reminder that nothing is guaranteed. “That’s the thing about pro sports; they’re always bringing in someone to replace you,” Matteo says. “You’ve got to keep battling and being better.”

If Turner’s life were a sports movie (and it very well could be), the credits might have already started rolling. But Turner has more of the script to write. He’s focused on making Forest a real home. He wants to keep improving under Berhalter, with his sights set on the next World Cup, on home soil. He doesn’t look back at the past much. When he does, he pulls out his ornament and remembers just how many people feel invested in his circuitous, upward trajectory. He thinks about all the pivots, random chances, and defied odds. He thinks about how close he was to giving it all up. And then he thinks about all the people who were willing to help. It motivates him.

Turner pays it back when he can. He still messages Decima throughout the season, occasionally attending Fairfield events and reviewing recruiting clips of goalkeepers. In interviews, he makes sure to specifically mention Matteo and DeBiase for helping him pursue his dream at the end of college. He credits Gaudette for supplying him with the confidence to chase MLS. And he praises his family for fostering his resilient mindset, for attending all his games, and for consoling him at every setback. He knows it’s never been an individual journey.

“It takes a village,” Stu says. “And the village has done something right.”

Jake Kring-Schreifels is a sports and entertainment writer based in New York. His work has also appeared in Esquire.com, GQ.com, and The New York Times.