Star football player Megan Rapinoe evoked horror and admiration

Three minutes. That is how long the performance of American football star Megan Rapinoe with her club OL Reign last Sunday morning (Dutch time) in the championship match against Gotham FC. With no one around, she went to the ground. She suffered a serious Achilles tendon injury. She left the field emotional.

“Not a perfect end to a career,” the striker noted dryly afterwards in a packed press room. But hey, you don’t get to choose those kinds of things. And she’s lived some fairytales, too, she said. Such as the 2019 World Cup in France, when she led the American team to a 2-0 victory in the final against the Netherlands, including with the opening goal.

Or her strong performance during the Olympic semi-final against Canada in 2012, when she curled the ball into the goal from a corner – a trick she repeated against Australia in a bronze medal match during the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo. That Olympic goal is highly ranked on fan sites.

It had been known for some time that Rapinoe would quit. Earlier this year she announced that she was working on her final season. She had won everything there was to win. Scored 63 times in 203 international matches. Won the world title twice (in 2015 and 2019) and once Olympic gold (in London in 2012). In her top year of 2019, she was named the best player of the World Cup and received the Ballon d’Or for the best player in the world.

But more than her football qualities, Megan Rapinoe (38) will be remembered by friends and foes for her actions off the field. She spoke out about Black Lives Matter, sexism, equal pay, gay rights, the pandemic and white supremacy. She contributed to a mini-series about the taboo on depression. And then she also showed off her fiancé, the American basketball star Sue Bird. ‘Woke choke’ she was sometimes called in her native country.

Her ‘fit’ during the 2019 World Cup with the then US president was much discussed. Donald Trump had seen an interview with Rapinoe, in which she said not to “the fucking White House” to go if her team became world champions. He demanded more respect for the United States, the White House and the American flag in a tweet and said, loosely translated: first win that title before you open your big mouth.

The extent to which Trump was wrong became clear last summer during the World Cup in Australia. Rapinoe was not in good shape that tournament and he must have been wringing his hands in front of the TV when they missed a penalty in the penalty shootout against Sweden in the round of 16. „Nice shot, Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!!”, he wrote on Truth Social.

Megan Rapinoe had to leave the field after three minutes in the championship match of the American league last weekend with an Achilles tendon injury.

Lonely fate

Rapinoe’s bravado (and everything she stands for) sometimes brings out the worst in people. Every time she was on the ball, it resulted in a flood of sexist and homophobic reactions on social media. The way she celebrated goals – her arms spread wide: bring it on – the many splashes of color in her hair, the smile around her mouth after her missed World Cup penalty against Sweden. Who did that woman think she was?

You also saw it during her last match on Sunday. As Rapinoe clutched her ankle, her face contorted in pain, people gloated on X, the former Twitter. “Too bad for him, but I don’t lose sleep over it,” wrote one. “You don’t wish this on anyone, except Rapinoe,” another. And: “It’s a shame she wasn’t kicked so hard that she can never walk again.”

She herself knew all too well: that is the lonely fate of figureheads, especially female ones. You cannot carry on that role without sacrifices. In a podcast by the American bestselling author Glennon Doyle, last summer, she said that after her career she wanted to find out how it is possible that she can “dissociate” so well as a football player that even that fit with Trump did not affect her. “Sometimes I feel like two people: Megan the football star and Megan the woman with an inner life.”

But she had no choice, she wrote a few years ago in her autobiography A life. She worries about the world, which is on a point of no return heading. In her book she tries to wake up readers to what they did she to make it a better place, despite their fear of major social upheavals? “You only live once.”

In the months before her farewell, Rapinoe regularly spoke out about issues that were important to her. How was it possible that the American women’s soccer team had to fight in court for six years for better payments? After all the examples of sexual and emotional abuse of coaches in the US, it was time for a sweep through the offices of women’s football. And the Spanish Football Association had to enter into an “open and honest conversation” with players after the much-discussed kiss of president Luis Rubiales.

What is special is that her statements and actions can evoke admiration even from her biggest critics. For example, the pro-Trump channel Fox posted an overview of the best moments of “one of the most influential and most decorated football players in American history.” It can change.