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SAN JOSE, Calif. — U.S. girls’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe is able to retire after an illustrious profession by which she received an Olympic gold medal, two World Cups and by no means shied away from utilizing her platform to highlight social points.
Rapinoe, 38, introduced Saturday her fourth World Cup might be her final and she or he’ll formally retire with the OL Reign on the finish of the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League season.
Rapinoe and the U.S. workforce are aiming for a 3rd consecutive title when the Ladies’s World Cup kicks off on July 20 in Australia and New Zealand. The U.S. performs Wales in a ultimate tune-up match Sunday in California earlier than leaving for the World Cup.
“I’m simply actually grateful to have the ability to do it on this method,” Rapinoe mentioned in San Jose, California, forward of the match. “I perceive that it’s extremely uncommon for athletes of any stature to have the ability to exit in their very own method, on their very own phrases, on the time that they need, in a method that feels actually peaceable and settled for them.
“So simply wished to do it now and truthfully form of get it out of the way in which earlier than we go right down to New Zealand so we are able to give attention to the duty at hand, which is successful one other World Cup.”
On the 2019 World Cup in France, Rapinoe scored six objectives over the course of the match, together with a penalty in a 2-0 victory over the Netherlands within the ultimate. She additionally completed with three assists and claimed the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball for one of the best total participant. Rapinoe additionally took residence the Ballon d’Or and the Greatest FIFA Ladies’s Participant awards — the sport’s high particular person honors — for her play in 2019.
Rapinoe is tied with Abby Wambach for third all-time in assists for the U.S. Ladies’s Nationwide Workforce and is one in every of solely seven gamers in workforce historical past with greater than 50 profession objectives and assists. She first performed for the U.S. senior workforce in 2006.
Rapinoe has performed her total 11-year NWSL profession for the Reign. She has scored the sixth most objectives in league historical past with 48.
An outspoken advocate for equal pay in girls’s soccer and supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, President Joe Biden final yr awarded Rapinoe the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Rapinoe was the primary white athlete and first feminine to kneel in the course of the nationwide anthem in solidarity with former NFL participant Colin Kaepernick, in response to U.S. Soccer.
She is engaged to be married to girls’s basketball icon Sue Hen.
“I don’t even assume there are phrases to say what she’s meant to the expansion of soccer on this nation, and never simply this nation, worldwide,” U.S. ahead Sophia Smith mentioned. “She is a legend. … So it’s a actually unhappy and bittersweet time. However I’m excited to have the ability to go on this final journey along with her within the World Cup and see all the good issues that she does after her profession.”
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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