Nearly one year ago, Christen Press found her world crumbling around her. Her club, Swedish power Tyresö FF, fell to Wolfsburg in the Uefa Women’s Champions League final, a heartbreaking 4-3 defeat. Compounding the loss, Tyresö had filed for bankruptcy before the match, putting Press and her team-mates out of a club and out of work. Press had every right to be angry and anxious, but she wrote a reflective response on her blog after the defeat. “I knew that although I was losing everything – not just the title, but also my team, my training environment, my life, my friends – I had won something more.”

What did Press win during her two seasons playing in Sweden? One could point to her spot on the US women’s national team and newfound tactical acumen. But the real victory was both bigger and more subtle, reflected in the 26 year-old forward’s ability to realize that she had “won something” as defeat swallowed her club and former life whole in the span of several weeks.

“I think a lot of my career and my life before I went to Sweden, I felt like I was trying to be someone else,” says Press, speaking from Newport Beach where she and the US team are preparing for the 2015 Women’s World Cup this summer in Canada.

The old Press held a Captain Ahab-sized obsession from childhood to play international football. This self-described “tunnel vision” fostered stress and anxiety. Like many perfectionists, her best good was never good enough. Press would often cry after games, feeling as if she had let her team down even if they won.

Released from the pressure of her own expectations in Sweden, Press rediscovered the joy she once felt playing football, which, happily, won her the place with the national team she had long desired. Armed with a new mindset – the ability to see silver linings in thin, dark clouds – Press has become one of the brightest prospects in the United States’ attacking arsenal, a potential breakout star at this summer’s World Cup in Canada. “When I went to Sweden, I sort of found out who I was,” says Press. “And I learned to love her. I think that’s what I won.”

But three years ago, Press’ future was in doubt. After playing her first season of professional soccer, the short-lived league, Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), folded at the beginning of 2012, leaving Press without a club or clear direction forward and, agonizingly, with no national team caps to her name.

From her childhood home in southern California, Press mulled her career options, playing pick-up games on Manhattan Beach to stay in shape.

Until that moment, her career had progressed following a familiar script for future US soccer stars. Press featured for youth national teams and earned a scholarship to Stanford University where she won the Hermann Trophy, awarded to college soccer’s top player, in 2010 and broke the school’s all time scoring record.

After graduating in 2010, Press believed that playing in WPS would get her to the national team. Starring for magicJack, Press scored 10 goals in 19 games, earning Rookie of the Year honors. But just when her national team dream felt as if it was within reach, Press woke up to an email in early February 2012 informing her that WPS had folded.

“It absolutely seemed like my chance was over,” says Press. With no WPS games to get noticed, Press thought her dream of playing with the national team in the 2012 Olympics was lost. Faced with a decision to either leave soccer behind or play in Europe, Press scrambled to find a team that would take her. “I made the decision to … play for myself,” recalls Press. “To try to get something else great out of soccer” beyond her national team ambitions.

Landing with Göteborg FC in Sweden, Press was exposed to a new style of play, a slower, more technical version of the game than the fast, physical one she played at Stanford and in WPS.

In one of her first practices with Göteborg, Press called loudly for the ball, and her coach chided her for revealing her position to everyone on the field. Instead, he insisted that Press communicate “through movement,” not words, forcing her to read the game faster and make more deceptive runs off the ball. “All the things I was learning, I was falling in love with,” says Press, “It became the beautiful game.”

A year later, Press joined Tyresö FF, playing alongside Brazilian star Marta. Once called the galacticos of the women’s game, the team dominated the Swedish domestic league and made the Champions League final in 2014 even as financial storm clouds gathered overhead.

It was also in Sweden that Press started blogging. It began as a project to keep her family informed about her travels, but it quickly became a therapeutic outlet for the young forward, a medium to explore her changing outlook on life. “I thought it would be a nice way to fill my friends and my family in on what I was doing,” says Press, “but also it was kind of for me.”

As is the case with everything that Press does, she did it well. Before publishing a post, Press went through multiple rounds of revisions and threw out versions that did not meet her standards.

Press in action for USA against France. Photograph: Edward Boone/Corbis

At times, her blog can read like a student’s study abroad journal (if the student happened to play professional soccer in Sweden). Press recounts her cultural encounters (ordering coffee in Swedish), travels to European cities (Oslo, Vienna, Lisbon), and reading lists (Kafka on the Shore, The Kite Runner).

In her more introspective posts, Press delves into psychology (her major at Stanford along with communications) and her evolving mindset. In one alliterative outburst, she describes her decision to play in Sweden as “an Existential Experience Exploring the Errors of my Earlier Existence.”

“I think that year helped her hone her game, but maybe more the mental side of it,” says her Stanford and US team-mate Kelley O’Hara. “She’s able to let things go faster, and that obviously helps her on the field. She meditates now, she’s very cerebral, very intellectual.”

Press expressed a similar attitude on her blog. “I’ve tried really hard the last few years to be less attached to winning,” she wrote, “I would like to fight as hard as I possibly can in each and every game, and win or lose, leave it at that and move forward. I know in my heart that that is the mindset I need to be a successful and happy athlete.”

Contrary to her expectations entering Sweden, her national team coaches were watching, and they were impressed with her new mindset and tactical awareness. Press earned her first cap in 2013, scoring two goals and serving up one assist in her first match, and has remained a fixture of the side ever since, scoring 20 goals in 43 appearances, none better than a searing run and finish through the French midfield in the 2015 Algarve Cup.

This summer, the United States will need Press to bring both her nascent athleticism and Swedish-trained soccer brain to the World Cup in order to defeat the likes of Japan, France, and the other technically gifted teams that will challenge for the World Cup this summer.

While some critics have lamented that the US women’s team rely too heavily on physicality, strength, and speed, Press sees the national side integrating the tactical awareness she developed in Sweden alongside the fitness, grit, and tenacity that have been fixtures since the 1990s.

“It’s this really interesting cat and mouse game where I’m trying to play in two different styles at the same time,” says Press. “Now the whole team understands how I play, my tendencies, and what I like about the ball. I think they think it’s a style thing, like ‘Oh, this is Christen’s style,’ but in Europe this is just how you play soccer.”

Easing the fusion of styles, six of the 23 players on the World Cup roster played overseas with Press after the collapse of WPS, and her coach from Tyresö, Tony Gustavsson, is now an assistant with the team.

“We all sort of came back at the same moment with this new appreciation for the nuanced game,” says Press. “When you watch the national team, how the younger players play versus how the older players play … It’s not better or worse, you just see the game transforming.”

To win in Canada, the team will also need to adopt Press’ new outlook on life, the desire to win the World Cup without becoming overburdened by the expectation that they return from Canada carrying the trophy.

“When you’ve learned to love yourself, you get all the things that come with that,” says Press. “Friends, passion, success.” This summer, US fans will hope that Press soon adds another accolade to that list: a World Cup trophy.