Megan Rapinoe, icon of American women’s soccer, was injured in the last game of her career, the final of the United States championship. Additionally, her team, OL Reign, lost 2-1 to NJ/NY Gotham in San Diego, California.
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Sitting on the grass, with her head between her shirt and her eyes full of tears from the beginning of the match, Megan Rapinoe surely did not imagine that this would be the last match of her career, which could have ended with her winning her first United States Women’s Cup. United in California, the state in which he grew up.
But this Saturday, November 11, the 38-year-old player was injured, in what seemed like a harmless slip, and limped off the field in the 6th minute, amidst a great ovation from the San Diego public and hugged by the captain. of NY/NJ Gotham FC, Ali Krieger, another American soccer icon who was playing his last game.
“I felt a ‘pop’, then I couldn’t feel my Achilles tendon, I think I tore it, it’s really the worst thing you can imagine. It’s horrible. Leaving a final so soon, I don’t deserve it, frankly. But that’s the way it is. life, it’s part of the game, I felt good before the game,” he commented after the match, with humor and with his right foot in a protective boot.
“Thank you to everyone who has been on this journey for all this time. It has been incredible, perhaps, apart from this, I could not have written it any other way,” he added. “From now on I am a normal person, who will have to undergo a long rehabilitation,” she added.
Rapinoe, celebrated as much for her activism off the field as for her successes on the pitch, announced earlier this year that this would be her last season.
“I am very proud of my entire career”
The 2019 FIFA Women’s Player of the Year ended her epic career with the national team with 63 goals and 203 caps spanning more than 17 years.
Rapinoe’s club career did include one title, winning the French league with Lyon in 2013, and with the Reign she also won three NWSL Shields, awarded to the team with the best regular season record.
“I am very proud of my entire career and very grateful for everything it has given me and for the time I have been able to play,” she declared.
“So even though it was a tough night, it was amazing and very grateful to be here and again, very proud of our group.”
Rapinoe’s World Cup career also ended in bitter disappointment, as she missed a penalty in the round of 16 loss against Sweden in New Zealand in August.
Committed on and off the pitch
A few hours earlier, Rapinoe had appeared at the Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego in style: dyed pink hair, sunglasses and a denim jacket, holding onto a speaker playing an American hip-hop classic, “X gon ‘give it to ya’, by rapper DMX.
The song was released in 2002, the same year the Redding-born forward began her career in Elk Grove, a suburb of Sacramento.
Twenty-one years later, Rapinoe leaves the field with two World Cups (2015 and 2019), a Ballon d’Or (2019), an Olympic gold medal (2012) and a status that goes beyond her sport.
The partner of former basketball star Sue Bird has used her successes as a platform in favor of LGBT+ rights and against racial violence in the United States and has worked with her teammates to achieve equal pay between men and women on the US team.
On Saturday, with the retirements of Rapinoe (38 years, 203 caps and 63 goals) and Ali Krieger (39 years, 108 caps), American women’s soccer saw the end of an era, with players who took it to the top his sport, a minor sport in the United States. The NWSL, the American women’s league, is reaping the rewards and starting next year it will multiply its television revenue by 40 (240 million dollars in four years) and will broadcast four times as many matches.
With AFP
Adapted from its French original
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