SI will produce 24 different covers of this week's issue, one for each member of the U.S. women’s national soccer team and head coach Jill Ellis. The effort is a first for the venerable magazine in its 61-year history, and marks an expansion from prior multiple cover efforts that featured as many as six regional covers. It is editorially rare for SI to feature the same subject two weeks in a row minus additional games being played -- the team following its FIFA Womens' World Cup win was featured on a digital-only cover last week during a dark week for the magazine. The various covers will be distributed randomly throughout the country, but also will be available for individual ordering through SI’s consumer marketing department. SI also will issue a special composite cover to subscribers of the various cover images. Most of the cover images were shot last Friday morning in N.Y., shortly before the team’s ticker-tape parade in lower Manhattan. “The U.S. women’s national team has plenty of recognizable, even famous, names, but we couldn’t think of a group so thoroughly identified with a team as this one,” said SI Managing Editor Chris Stone. “Each player and coach Ellis deserves her own cover, and that’s what we settled on.”
