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Rapinoe after NWSL championship: ‘I just rode it until the wheels came off’

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There was a constant refrain all week: the NWSL Championship was set up for a poetic conclusion between two of the game’s best players. Megan Rapinoe and Ali Krieger would play each other for another trophy in the final match of their respective careers. “You can’t write a better ending,” Gotham forward Lynn Williams said with a smile on Friday. It was supposed to be a last chance to give two players their flowers in real time, regardless of who ended up victorious.

But just two minutes and 25 seconds into Saturday night’s showdown at Snapdragon Stadium in front of a raucous record crowd of 25,011 fans, Rapinoe’s chance to write her half of the story ended abruptly and without warning. During an offensive run, Rapinoe slipped and fell to the field with an apparently non-contact injury. She grabbed her lower right leg, first in disbelief and then with a characteristically wry smile.

“It sucks,” Rapinoe said after the game, her right foot in a boot. “I don’t think there are any good things to say about it, or even a silver lining.

“I felt good. I’ve actually felt my best these past few weeks. I didn’t feel tight in my calf or Achilles tendon or anything. So in classic form I was like, ‘F…, who just kicked me?’ There is no one, I am the one pushing, there is no one around me. So I had that immediate thought and then just started feeling blue, there’s nothing there. I don’t really think I need a scan (to know it was possibly a torn Achilles tendon).”

While she was fitted with a boot and crutches at halftime, Rapinoe sent a few texts to her mother and her fiancé Sue Bird so the rest of the team could go over the plan for the second half. “I wasn’t overly emotional about it,” Rapinoe said. “I mean, I blew my Achilles tendon in the sixth minute of my last ever match in the literal championship match.”

Before Rapinoe left the field for the final time, she stumbled over to Krieger and exchanged a hug, somehow still smiling that familiar smile. Krieger, for her part, said she encouraged Rapinoe to wrap her leg to go back outside, saying she never expected something like this to happen.

“Football is such a risk, right? You never know if it will be your last game, your last moment, and if it will happen to such an incredible player, in that moment, when there was such a build-up,” Krieger said.

As Rapinoe gingerly left the field, it was hard not to think about something Krieger had mentioned at a pre-game press conference about why she was still playing despite all the wins and all the struggles she had gone through in her career. “I give everything I have and you don’t necessarily get it all back. So you have to have the willingness and the drive to want to do it for yourself because you love it,” she said.


Ali Krieger and Megan Rapinoe are ending their careers together. (Photo by Ben Nichols/Getty Images)

This year, Rapinoe hasn’t always gotten much back from the game. She missed her penalty during the USWNT’s World Cup defeat to Sweden this summer. Until that moment she had never missed a penalty. Like Saturday, that evening in Melbourne ended with tears and laughter and that tone of disbelief that such a familiar part of her game had failed her at such an important moment. But on Saturday it felt like nothing more than a fluke, a bad move, something she could never have seen coming or even tried to avoid.

The moment influenced the match for both teams. “When I saw her put her head back,” said Gotham forward and Midge Purce, the game’s MVP, “I’ve seen her go down (before), and that was really sad. Then one of the girls on their team started crying, and I turned to (Yazmeen Ryan), and I said, let’s go see her, because she was obviously upset. It’s hard. I think that definitely affected them a lot.”

Purce helped Gotham take the lead later that half, setting up Lynn Williams’ opening goal by running through three OL Reign defenders. Rose Lavelle equalized, but Purce again provided the go-ahead goal, putting her team ahead before half-time – a lead they would never relinquish.

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As Lavelle walked through the mixed zone after the match, clearly feeling different emotions from the loss, she had to pause to collect herself before answering a question about Rapinoe.

“It seems like a sick joke that it has to end like this,” she said. “It was such an honor to share the field with her, so I wish we could have done it today. She is amazing; she doesn’t deserve that. I think with everything, she just takes it on the chin and was still our biggest fan.

During the post-match press conference, Lavelle sat next to Rapinoe as the former Ballon d’Or winner dealt with the setback the only way she knows how: through humor.

“I mean, I don’t deserve this,” Rapinoe said, laughing. “I am a better person than this, maybe I was in a previous life. … This one feels different than missing a (penalty) in New Zealand. I mean, again, it’s like that’s life. It’s part of the game.”

Just over 24 hours earlier, Rapinoe had laughed at why she and her teammates had never before managed to win an NWSL championship, despite two previous appearances in 2014 and 2015 and a string of semifinal losses. “S… is hard,” she had said, a simple explanation. A real.

Saturday night it was more of the same.

She was also asked another question, one she has heard again and again in the long run of matches since announcing her retirement ahead of the World Cup, during her final match with the USWNT and her retirement ceremony with the Reign. What exactly is her legacy?

And as always, she was still hesitant to answer in the way any reporter would want: a neat summary of her career, her achievements off the field, her personality, her refusal to pigeonhole herself.

“Oh, that’s for you to write,” she replied. ‘Don’t know.’ I’ve always tried to play the game the right way. Always tried to enjoy it. At the end of the day, I feel like we’re in the entertainment business, and especially in a growing sport and a growing league, I feel like that’s really important. Always try to make things better.

“I just walk away so proud and so happy that I have contributed not only to the game but to the era I played in and to know that the game is in such a better place. That’s a testament to all the players that have played in this generation and played in this league,” she said, pointing to the league’s new media deal and the quality of the matches. “I feel like I’m going to walk away smiling no matter what, really proud of my whole career.”

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So perhaps it was fitting that in one of her final statements as a player, she gave a typical Megan Rapinoe response to a question about the game she now leaves behind, as a player at least.

“This is what we have built, the players who played in my generation, this is part of our legacy and what we have left behind. What is there now for the kids to take with them and do with whatever they want. But I feel like we’ve left a pretty solid blueprint for them to not only continue to grow the game and make it the premier league of the world, but also influence change off the field and continue to link them to what they are. do on the field,” Rapinoe said.

“I’m a proud gay aunt who looks down at the competition and says, ‘Damn, we did well.’ But they will be able to go much further.”

And with that, Rapinoe was done with her responsibilities as a professional football player for the first time in more than ten years.

“I think I just rode it until the wheels came off,” Rapinoe said. “You don’t always get a perfect ending, but I’ve had so many perfect endings too.”

(Photo: Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)

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