Megan Rapinoe began her long goodbye with the equivalent of a homecoming.
In the year and a half since she became a professional soccer player, Rapinoe’s career has taken her to soccer clubs on two continents, to Olympics on three and, soon, to a fourth World Cup. On Sunday, a day after surprising her team and her fans by publicly announcing her plans to retire at the end of the year, Rapinoe took a seat on the bench of the U.S. women’s national team a few hundred miles from her hometown.
Rapinoe, 38, grew up in Redding, California, about 250 miles north of the venue of Sunday’s game, PayPal Park in San Jose. She estimated that about 40 of her relatives and friends had made the trip south to watch the United States beat Wales 2-0 in their final game on American soil ahead of the Women’s World Cup starting later this month in Australia and New York. Zealand.
“This is the closest I’ll ever play to Redding in my career,” Rapinoe had said on Saturday. “It feels very special. It feels perfect.”
During the press conference announcing her retirement plans on Saturday, Rapinoe said she was at peace with the decision to retire from football. Now she simply relishes the chance to properly say goodbye to the sport that made her an international star, as well as a spokeswoman for equal rights, equal pay and social justice issues close to her heart.
Rapinoe has played for the national team since 2006. A three-time Olympic and two-time World Cup champion, she has scored 63 goals for the United States and is one of seven players to accumulate more than 50 goals and 50 assists in her U.S. national team career.
Her role is different these days, she has evolved from a lineup fixture to a late-game substitute. However, she is still appreciated by her coach, Vlatko Andonovski; he included her in his World Cup squad because he appreciates her leadership, experience and ability to shape big moments.
Whenever and however she plays in the future, she will remain a crowd favorite. One fan, Corina Burns, wearing a No. 15 T-shirt with the name “Rapinoe” on the back, said she drove from Southern California with her three daughters to attend Sunday’s game. It wasn’t the family’s first trip to watch the national team play: they were in France four years ago when Rapinoe was one of the Americans’ most valuable players in their 2019 World Cup victory.
“We saw her play and fell in love with her,” said Burns.
That World Cup will remain Rapinoë’s crowning glory for the time being. She won both the Golden Boot as top scorer of the tournament and the Golden Ball as outstanding player. It’s also when she cemented her status as a pop culture icon: She scored six goals in the league, even as she publicly battled President Donald J. Trump.
She remains an outspoken voice, but she’s a different player these days. Rapinoe has been hampered by injuries for months, with an ankle injury keeping her out of the start of the National Women’s Soccer League season and a calf injury keeping her out of two national team matches against Ireland in April. Andonovski said after Sunday’s game that Rapinoe was medically cleared to compete in the World Cup but was still working to get fit.
In her absence, newer faces – Sophia Smith, Trinity Rodman, Alyssa Thompson – are beginning to lay claim to the forward position where Rapinoe was once a clear choice. That new generation, the one that will occupy the space vacated by Rapinoe, was seen again against Wales.
In the 76th minute on Sunday, Rodman, 21, broke through in a scoreless game by scoring easily on a cross from Smith, 22. Rodman struck again in the 88th minute, firing past the hands of Wales goalkeeper Olivia Clark from 20 yards out . . Rodman became the youngest American player to score two goals in an international match since 2019.
“It’s a younger roster this year, but the mix of the experience and the youth was really good to learn from each other,” Rodman said after the game as chants of “USA” echoed through the stadium. “Just as we can learn from them, they can learn from us.”
In that respect, Rapinoe still has a lot to offer. Andonovski has made no secret of how much he appreciates the wisdom and institutional knowledge she brings to a team that now includes players like 18-year-old Thompson, fresh out of high school, and Savannah DeMelo, 25, who hosted her first cap on Sunday, alongside dozens of other new faces heading into their first World Cup.
That the US struggled to tear down a resolute Wales team that failed to qualify for the World Cup until Rodman scored twice from the bench was perhaps a hopeful indication that Rapinoe still has an important role to play before she walks away for good of the team. .
Her chance never came on Sunday: Rapinoe didn’t warm up and Andonovski never called her up. It was another sign that although Rapinoe said her time was almost up, times may have already changed.