Trinity Rodman and Megan Rapinoe have been talking a lot lately.
At the U.S. women’s national team media day on June 27 in Carson, California, Rodman shared some of the legendary winger’s advice to her as she prepared for her first World Cup.
“The biggest thing that she told me is you’re here for a reason,” Rodman said. “Do you, and if you stray from that, you’re not gonna perform the way you want to. When you’re on a big stage, it’s easy to feel like you need to live up to everyone’s expectations, and in reality you need to play the way you played when you first came in [to camp].”
Twelve days and 365 miles later, Rodman stepped onto the field at PayPal Park in San Jose for the second half of the team’s World Cup send-off match, and scored an emphatic brace against a scrappy yet composed Wales side.
Rapinoe didn’t play in the send-off game, and it remains unclear exactly how much she’ll be able to make on-field contributions in the World Cup as she eases her way back from injury. But her presence, and the legacy she’s built over the course of her career, was nonetheless felt on the pitch that Sunday, channeled, even if only in a small way, through the advice that buoyed Rodman’s confidence and encouraged her to show up and play as her full self.
This World Cup will be Rapinoe’s last. The 38-year-old announced on the eve of the send-off game her plans to retire from professional soccer at the end of the NWSL season, rendering obsolete the endless speculations about her future.
Questions about the remainder of Rapinoe’s storied tenure have been swirling for years: Would she even make the World Cup roster? And if so, what role would she play? And if she was brought along primarily as a role player, would that assignment justify her potentially taking the spot of a player with the capacity to play a tournament’s worth of full 90s?
But ephemeral realities have a way of casting such questions in a new light, reassigning their value and urgency; now, as she prepares for her grand exit, her role is clear: to enjoy herself and the game she’s helped transform — which, of course, includes winning.
Rapinoe admitted during her announcement that “since the final whistle in Lyon” at the 2019 World Cup final, she’d been wrestling with the matter of her retirement. And yet, for a player who’s shown over the years that change was her only constant, Rapinoe supplied one of her last soccer-related surprises when she declared she’d soon be hanging up her boots. Getting the news out ahead of the tournament was done in part, she said, to eliminate the distraction caused by sitting quietly with the news.
“It feels weird to know and be settled, to sort of have to lie by omission about it,” she said. “I just want to be able to soak in every moment and share it with teammates and friends and family and share it with the rest of the world.”
If anything, Rapinoe’s retirement announcement added yet another dimension to the U.S. squad’s mandate this World Cup. Before, they were simply seeking an historical (for men’s and women’s soccer) three-peat championship at a time when the competition is fiercer than it’s ever been, and the margins between teams like Zambia and Germany are dwindling. Now, they want to usher the most recognizable face — and among the most undeniable forces — in women’s soccer into the next phase of her career with another title.
Naomi Girma counts Rapinoe, along with other veterans like Becky Sauerbrunn, Alex Morgan, and Crystal Dunn, among those who made her feel welcome when she first got invited to national team camp. She had a sense of what Rapinoe might be like — she’d been following her and the national team on Instagram long before she became a member herself — and was comforted by that same authenticity when she first met her in person.
“She’s unapologetically herself, which is really valuable to have and makes her such a great person to have on your team,” said Girma, 23. “She’ll be missed, but we know that we have a task at hand right now. We know she’s going to give everything to help us win this World Cup, and we’re going to help her do the same.”
For those national team players whose careers have intertwined with Rapinoe’s for even longer, her impending exit hits even deeper. Dunn was overcome with emotions reflecting on her friendship with the Seattle-based forward.
“I just love her so much,” she gushed, wiping back tears. “She’s been so key for me in my career and, you know, she’s somebody that I can call with the most random stuff. She has blue hair because I actually sent her a selfie of me having blue hair, so here we are.”
Dunn added that while some players are only interested in fulfilling the duties of their job description as soccer players — “showing up, playing soccer, doing that to the best of their ability” — Rapinoe has shown, through her own tireless advocacy and activism, that “we are so much more than just athletes playing on a field in front of fans.
“What she stands for is so incredibly important, and I think that’s why she means so much to me is that I’m also someone who feels like this game is a platform for us to show our true versions of ourselves,” Dunn added.
With an aversion to withholding the most important parts of herself, Rapinoe has always been who she is — on and off the field. She served one of the most iconic crosses in the history of women’s soccer in the 2011 World Cup, and came out as gay the following year; knelt in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick in 2016 (becoming the first white American athlete to join his protest), and ruffled the feathery ego of former President Donald Trump when she said, “I’m not going to the f—–g White House” in 2019. A month after that video clip surfaced, she was awarded both the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball at the 2019 World Cup, and later took home the coveted Ballon d’Or for that year.
Rapinoe has been clear that she thinks this will be the greatest World Cup yet. It’s also shaping up to be just as much of a social movement as it is a soccer tournament, with teams from every region of the world harnessing their agency and speaking out against injustices ranging from unequal pay to toxic coaches to a lack of resources unfit for a national team.
With so much heaped onto the shoulders of female athletes, it can be challenging to imagine a day where they’re able to focus solely on the game itself, and not the litany of social issues that currently surround it. But Rapinoe knows, has always known, it’s possible, and it’s a future she will continue fighting for through the conclusion of her career and whatever comes after it.
“What I see as the goal for us is not the comparison or an arrival point because that’s just a constant comparison to men’s sports, and that goalpost will just always be moved,” she said, “but I think for us it’s understanding that nothing ever stays the same, and you have to be in constant motion, constant progress. As soon as we know one thing, we have more knowledge to know something else and an opportunity to continue to be better, to bring more people in, to make more space for people to be their full selves.”
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