Untold numbers of girls dream of playing in the distinctive blue uniforms of the University of North Carolina, the most iconic program in college soccer. Heather O'Reilly is among the few who lived that dream.

Countless imagine, too, competing for the U.S. women's national team. O'Reilly is one of even fewer who made that aspiration a reality and one of the handful of players who won a World Cup to put the third star on the jersey crest worn by the most iconic team in women's soccer.

What most only dream of in soccer, O'Reilly has done.

Which isn't to say the newest member of Arsenal Ladies FC, the London team that introduced her Wednesday, has run out of dreams.

She just had to cross the ocean to chase this one.

"I'm 32 years old, and I felt like a kid again putting on my training top," O'Reilly said this week from London of her new employer. "There's something about the club, on both the women's and men's side, that it just sort of embodies a tradition of excellence that I want to be a part of."

Few people have ever been more synonymous with women's soccer in the United States than O'Reilly. She played 231 times for her country, more than all but seven American women. She won three Olympic gold medals, beating Germany with a semifinal winner in 2004 and setting up Alex Morgan's 123rd-minute semifinal winner against Canada in 2012. She was too young for the WUSA, the first attempt at a domestic pro league, but she played the entire run of WPS and the entire run to date of the NWSL.

But after she retired from the national team last fall, the challenge that remained unmet and untried was to move abroad.

"I just think it will be an incredibly rich experience," O'Reilly said. "I've never played overseas, and I'm sort of looking to equip myself with an experience that will not only serve me as a soccer player but will serve me as an ambassador for the game in the U.S. for years to come."

Barely four months ago she stood on the field in Columbus, Ohio, following a game against Thailand. She had scored the last of her 47 international goals and recorded the last of her 53 assists. She and her U.S. teammates linked arm in arm as they watched a video tribute to her international career. Less than a month later, she and husband Dave Werry flew to London, where Arsenal manager Pedro Martinez Losa had invited her to train with his team.

O'Reilly was barely 17 years old when she debuted for the United States in 2002. It had been a long time since she was the stranger in any soccer setting.

"I had nerves in the best of ways," O'Reilly said of the training in London. "I think that's true any time that you step out of your comfort zone -- and certainly playing in another country does that for you. It has been awhile since I was kind of the new kid, and it was a lot of fun.

"The training sessions were great. The players are very technical, they want to keep possession and keep the ball moving on the ground. The movement is great. Everybody knows the game. Obviously a lot of these women have grown up watching football, so everybody knows the game, thinks about the game. It is just a massive part of their life. It's their passion."

She returned stateside last fall without any formal agreement but with obvious interest on both sides. That led to the 18-month contract that now finds her in London for the start of an abbreviated spring season as the Football Association Women's Super League transitions from a summer-based schedule to a winter-based schedule in line with much of European soccer (to accommodate the shift, each of the league's 10 teams will play nine games this spring in addition to the FA Cup, with a full 18-game season beginning in September and running through May of 2018).

Arsenal offered a number of specific advantages, not even counting the perfectly manicured pitches at the club's training center that wowed her upon arrival. In addition to a common language and the lifestyle opportunities afforded by London's core, a short train ride from London Colney, where she will live, train and play, there is some familiarity with Martinez Losa, who previously coached in the NWSL. O'Reilly will play with at least a handful of familiar faces, including former NWSL MVP and Scottish star Kim Little. She will get to play in Kelly Smith's testimonial match, a celebration of an all-time great and O'Reilly's teammate years ago in the W League.