Football star Megan Rapinoe may have imagined beer at the press conference after the last game of her career. Certainly not: an orthopedic support shoe because of a serious injury and therefore good reasons for curses and gallows humor. She had been on the pitch for less than three minutes in the 1:2 (1:2) final for the title in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) between her OL Reign and Gotham FC – then a short movement ended her impressive career.
“I’m pretty sure I tore my Achilles tendon,” Rapinoe said before taking a long drink from a giant can of Bud Light in San Diego on Saturday evening (local time). “It’s disappointing that it ends like this. Win or lose, you want to play your last game.”
Rapinoe took on Trump
Instead of winning the US championship for the first time in her career and saying goodbye with the missing title, the 38-year-old with pink hair will most likely now have an operation and months of rehab ahead of her. A magnetic resonance imaging still needs to be done, said the Olympic champion after a dramatic game at the end. “I don’t deserve this, I’m a better person. This feels different to a missed penalty in New Zealand,” said Rapinoe.
In the summer at the World Cup, she missed a penalty shootout against Sweden in the round of 16, the USA was eliminated and instead of returning home with their third World Cup gold in a row, her international career ended early and with disappointment. Now the equal rights icon, who comes from Northern California, was denied a fitting farewell in her homeland.
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“You don’t always get a perfect ending. “I’ve had so many perfect endings in my career, the best in 2019,” she said, referring to the World Cup victory in France, when she took on then US President Donald Trump and became a global leader for equality.
This is one of the reasons why many of the more than 20,000 spectators in San Diego appeared shocked and sad for minutes as Rapinoe limped off the pitch supported by two supervisors. As a two-time world champion, Olympic champion, Olympic bronze medalist and winner of the World Player of the Year vote, she has left a major mark on US soccer.
“I’m very proud of everything”
But even more important was her influence as an activist who, among other things, campaigned for the rights of homosexual people and other minorities. Together with Ali Krieger, who was able to raise the trophy for the first championship in the Gotham FC jersey in her last career game as captain, Rapinoe is also one of the generation of US female soccer players who are fighting with the association for equal pay and even went to court for it.
“Of course I am proud of my career and what I have achieved on the pitch,” said Rapinoe before the playoff final and emphasized this again even after the bitter end. “But I’m very proud of everything I’ve accomplished off the court and how my career has influenced people, challenged them and given them an opportunity to see themselves.” Rapinoe is a lesbian and engaged to basketball player Sue Bird .
The figures and contracts published by the National Women’s Soccer League before the final made it clear how much women’s football has developed during Rapinoe’s career. For the next four years, the league will receive 240 million US dollars (257 million euros) for TV rights; games can also be seen on national television and no longer primarily via streaming providers. This season alone, viewership across the league has increased by 36 percent.
The young teams San Diego Wave and Angel City FC from Los Angeles played a large part in this. But Rapinoe, who was one of only five players to still play for the same team since the league was founded, set the record for the best-attended NWSL game in history: 34,130 fans came to her last main round home game in Seattle. At this point it wasn’t even clear whether OL Reign would even make it into the playoffs. It succeeded – and yet the woman with the most dyed hair was denied the triumphant finale.
