#megan rapinoe goals

[anewsbuddy]

Megan Rapinoe's retirement? What we know about USWNT star's future

Megan Rapinoe will retire from international competition after the 2023 World Cup. Earlier this month, the 38-year-old American said she would be hanging up her cleats after the 2023 NWSL season. It will be the end of an incredible career for Rapinoe, who helped the U.S. Women’s National Team win two World Cups and an Olympic gold medal. Throughout her career, Rapinoe has been a vocal supporter…

[xofantasycloud]

The smiles, the celebration, the joy, everything about this is just ✨🥹🫶🏻

[elenitrack]

Sophia Smith, Megan Rapinoe and Lindsey Horan 🇺🇸

2023 FIFA World Cup

[chelseajackarmy]

🌹

[the-physicality]

i really tried to not care so ottawa would pull out a w

[leveloneandup]

Christen Press on returning to soccer following ACL tear, season three of The RE—CAP podcast

Christen Press, the all-time leading goal scorer in Stanford history, has starred for club and country since graduating in 2010. With the USWNT, she has won two World Cups and scored 64 international goals. Press has played overseas professionally, including a stint at Manchester United, as well as in the NWSL with the Chicago Red Stars, Utah Royals and currently with Angel City FC.

After tearing her ACL in June 2022, Press required four surgeries and an arduous recovery. She returned to her first training session on Tuesday, after which she spoke to SBJ about her rehab and the new season of her podcast. Along with Tobin Heath, Megan Rapinoe and Meghan Klingenberg, Press founded a media and lifestyle brand called RE—INC in 2019. She and Heath are the co-hosts of the RE—CAP podcast, which returns for its third season on Thursday. The first episode includes appearances by USWNT legend Abby Wambach and author and podcast host Glennon Doyle.

On returning to the pitch . . .

I am currently in the car driving home from my first training. I would say the road to recovery happens very slow, and then yet it happens all at once. I have been back in the team environment for almost four months. So it's been a long time that I've been integrated into the environment, and it took four months for me to get ready to be in a warmup and a passing pattern — really simple, basic stuff. And I felt very ready for it. I felt almost underwhelmed by how easy it was because I've done a lot more complicated things, and yet it was also entirely overwhelming and joyful to be so connected to my teammates and be celebrated in the way that I have been these last two days.

I'm very grateful for that. They say it's the hope that kills you, and as I drive home, I just have this big smile on my face because I can't help it. I can't help hoping. I can't help believing that I'm going to make it back, and it's going to be everything that I see in my head. I'm relentlessly optimistic, I'm naively positive, and I like that about myself, and I'm not I don't intend to change it. I think the way that it left me feeling was just like, yes, I can do this.

On monitoring her rehab . . .

I'm a person of devices, so I have quite a toolkit, I'd say, of ways that we're tracking and measuring. The truth is we're really still working through issues with my knee, and I have chronic scarring of the knee, so I can experience some discomfort and some swelling that could lead to more scarring, which is incredibly rare, because most people don't scar after a couple months after their surgery. I'm now over nine months for my surgery and still at risk of scarring. So it just means that I have to try very carefully with how much impact my knee can take.

We're being careful, but we're progressing. In terms of my overall fitness, what my GPS has said is that I've got to like 60% of a match load, which is all that I really need to get in terms of volume. And yet, in the warmup and the passing pattern today, it felt like I played a 90-minute game. I was so fatigued. There's training, and then there’s really training. There's no way to get fit for football, except for playing football. And I've done a ton of running, I've done a ton of lifting, and now it's time to play.

On how deep she gets into data . . .

My performance staff would laugh because they said they've never worked with a player that cares so much. So right now, I wear a Polar Watch that I was given in like 2015 from the national team. It's just old school. And I wear my Apple Watch, which is connected to my GPS so I can see all my data live, from heart rate to distance to speed to all that. And then I do sleep with an Oura ring — although I'm not endorsing any of these products, I'm not connected to any of these products — but I do sleep with an Oura ring and track my sleep and my stress levels.

On season three of the podcast . . .

Our show really is about authenticity, and it's about creating a more inclusive space for sports and including diversity of perspective. And so that means we have hard conversations, and we have honest conversations and we have vulnerable conversations, and we have a lot of fun — the same spirit and joy that you saw last year during the World Cup edition of the show. We're back, and we're bigger than ever.

On the origin of the creating the podcast . . .

I never thought I would be in media. I think that's even more true of Tobin. There's two typical paths for athletes after soccer, and it’s coaching and broadcast. ‘So Christen, do you want to be a coach?’ ‘No.’ ‘So Christen, then you must want to be a broadcaster? I was like, ‘No.’

That's an interesting part of the story, but first and foremost, we decided to launch this show as current and active players, and that's unique and different. It's not really a stepping-back-from-soccer thing. It's current players trading stories and having a little bit more space to dictate the narrative.

And then secondly, we really approach this as business leaders. This is our business, this is our company. We are a 3C company: content, community and commerce. The most amazing thing about women's sports is the community, and we're trying to build the coolest women's sports community in the world in our membership, and we're feeding that with amazing content.

And I think because we have such an authentic and vulnerable relationship with our audience that we've developed over the last five years that we've been building this business, it made sense for Tobin and I to be our first piece of content that was really more large scale and more widely accessible. But the plan will be to find like-minded people that sit at the intersection of sports, progress and equity, to continue to hear stories from an insider's perspective. It really disrupts the industry in that way.

On topics they plan to cover in season three . . .

We're going to be talking about women's health, particularly in sport, which is obviously a really hot topic, and representation in sport — how we make it more diverse and equitable for more people, be it across the gender spectrum, the orientation spectrum, across different races and classes. I think that's incredibly important. Soccer in America is an upper-middle class sport, and almost everywhere else in the world, it's a very accessible sport that's found on the street. That's really the spirit of football, so that's really important to us.

On the role of athletes as activists . . .

The interesting thing about the community that surrounds women's sports in particular is they care about a lot more than the sports, and the values transcend beyond the pitch. And that's about diversity, inclusion, progress. And I think that's just inherent because it is disruptive in itself to see women embodied, powerful, unapologetic and also very celebrated the way that you do in the professional sports world today. The people that it's drawing in are the same people that want to march, and they want to create change and they want to stand up for what they believe in.

It's so embodied in the Angel City culture. The professional team that I play for has just nailed it. And when you're in the stadium, it's electric, and win or lose, it's a different type of vibe than any other sports arena I've been in because there's a connection point for all of the audience. They care about more than the X's and O's. They care about what we represent to them, the progress and the opportunity that we as women athletes represent.

On the versatility of women athletes . . .

It's always been that way in women's sports, and it's just becoming more popularized. I think the expectation is that we would always be multifaceted as women and expected to do multiple jobs in multiple roles, if we were going to have careers. And so it really did take to me and my personality to be a player and also be a leader off the field, on the US women’s national team, going through the Equal Pay lawsuit, going through the reestablishment of our players association.

For me, it was such a balancing sense of purpose that I continue to create space in my life for that, and I think that's what we've done with our business, RE—INC. RE—INC is reimagined, incorporated. We set out, in 2019 when we started this company, to reimagine the status quo, to reimagine the way women are seen and experienced in sports. And it's a very bold and ambitious goal, and we do it in a multifaceted way. And I'm really, really proud of that.

[tvmusiclife]

Big day for 2015 era USWNT stans

Megan Rapinoe brace

Sydney Leroux bicycle kick

Alex Morgan goal

Ali Krieger THE DEFENDER save

[didalexiabreakupwitholgayet]

you just forgot to mention lucy bronze is racist lol

hey, anons - that's why i qualified my original lucy bronze post by saying it's about her as a footballer. (also, i've never heard that saying/idiom about belly buttons, but i'm going to use it in the future!)

and one more point about fandom. i think we are in a place where we are scared to criticise our favourite players or acknowledge the grey areas of their lives. jenni hermoso is one of my favourite players ever. did she fuck up when she mocked the haka in new zealand with other players? yes she did and i will openly admit that. the team publicly apologised to māori elders, and i hope they all learned from that.

okay, so there are a lot of reasons why lucy bronze is a polarising figure. some barça fans were initially wary of her because of her past support for real madrid but also because of some of the mistakes she's made as rb (like the pajor goal in the uwcl final). for arsenal fans, i'm not an expert (maybe it's her age or the fact that she used to play for man city?...not sure).

but the bigger thing: i won't sugarcoat or make excuses for lucy's past and her support of mark sampson (who used racist language against two black england players). as someone who has suffered racist abuse myself, i know how harmful that is, and bias (whether conscious or subconscious) should be called out. i can only hope that lucy has grown and learned from her mistakes and is a different person now than she has been in the past.

(and for comparison this happened in 2017. meanwhile megan rapinoe started kneeling in 2016 in protest of racial inequality and police brutality and briefly lost her uswnt roster spot as a result.)

related to this, there have been a number of ignorant statements made by female players over the last few years on the issue of racism in football, and everyone needs to do better. no excuses.

for more background:

(and please don't argue that aluko deserved it because of her political views. racist abuse is racist abuse, period.)

[rollaroundincompliments]

Those of you who don't closely follow the US Women's Soccer Team may not know what's going on recently. You may remember the team being both very good and very gay, lead by purple haired lesbian Megan Rapinoe. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case and things with the team have quickly gone down hill following Rapinoe's retirement.

The Olympic roster was recently announced and included in it is a player who is openly and largely unapologetically homophobic. No public repercussions or criticisms of her views have come from the team. Rather fans are being shamed by the new head coach and told we should "learn to embrace" a player who so openly hates so many of us.

So I am here to inform you about some of the top queer players from other teams you should be rooting for if you, like me, do not want to support the US team during the Olympics this year.

#1 Marta (she/her)

Truly what is there to say about Marta that hasn't been said. The Brazilian Goat and the queen of women's soccer. The Olympics will be her last major tournament with the Brazilian national team and the world of soccer will be much poorer when she leaves.

She is also joined by many queer teammates including Debhina, Lauren, and Adriana

#2 Quinn (they/them)

In 2021 Quinn became the first openly nonbinary athlete to a win a gold medal, when Canada defeated Sweden for the top prize. Canada's strategy last Olympics was to be a defensive powerhouse and Quinn, as a defensive midfielder, played a huge role in that effort. They will very likely be on the roster this year to defend Canada's gold, joined by queer teammates Kadeisha Buchanan and Kailen Sheridan.

#3 Barbara Banda (she/her)

Barbara Banda, the Zambian phenomenon, is a fast, intelligent, and technically gifted player who is currently leading the Orlando Pride (NWSL team) to crush every record in the book including a 6-0 victory last weekend, after the first goal of which she ran directly to the pride flag to celebrate:

There are many many more queer players who are going to be at the womens soccer tournament during the Olympics, but these are three that absolutely deserve your support

[emotionalsupportsoccerball]

Player Profile: Megan Rapinoe

No better player to kick off these posts than the queen herself, Megan Rapinoe!

Position: Forward

Hometown: Redding, CA

Age: 37 (but will be 38 when she gets to the cup, birthday on July 5th)

Jersey Number: 15

Previous World Cups: 2011, 2015, 2019

USWNT Caps: 199 (it’ll be 200 by the cup with the sendoff match)

USWNT Goals: 63

Club Team: OL Reign obvi

College: University of Portland

Star Sign: Cancer

Nicknames: Pinoe, Sir P

Fun Fact: Megan is one of four sets of twins on the roster, and her sister Rachael also played professional soccer for a period of time.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

Early Sunday morning, the USWNT exited the World Cup in the first round of the knockout stage, losing to an overmatched Sweden team on penalty kicks at the conclusion of a 0-0 tie. It marked the worst finish for the American women’s team in World Cup history.

Our national team has been ranked No. 1 in the world since June 2017 and for all but 10 months since March 2008. The squad has never been ranked lower than No. 2. In the Round of 16, Sweden conquered a dynasty.

Close observers were not surprised. The team has been in mental decay since Carli Lloyd retired (2020) and corporate media anointed the purple-haired Rapinoe as the unquestioned face of American women’s soccer.

For the last three years, the 38-year-old winger has used the team’s spotlight to grow the Rapinoe brand. The game, the competition, and representing national honor all took a back seat to self-promotion, virtue-signaling, so-called social activism centered around the BLM-LGBTQ-Alphabet Mafia, and expressing Trump derangement.

Rapinoe’s handlers and major corporations partnered with corporate media to cast her as “The Great Gay Hope,” the alternative-lifestyle Muhammad Ali.

Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, Carli Lloyd, and Alex Morgan were all better players than Rapinoe. But none of them can match Rapinoe’s knack for drawing attention to herself for sleeping with women — her superpower, the behavior that makes her a legendary icon.

To no surprise, the strategy backfired. Rapinoe acted as a locker-room cancer. She diminished the importance of competition. Throughout the World Cup, the U.S. women failed to play with passion and precision. In four games, they scored four goals and won just one match.

On Sunday, with a chance to off Sweden with a penalty kick, Rapinoe missed the entire net wide right. She smirked and laughed in embarrassment. Two other U.S. women missed their kicks as well. But those women earned their spots on the roster. Rapinoe was on the team and on the field because of social pressure and a never-ending marketing campaign. She hadn’t earned the right to fail. The opportunity was bestowed on her.

When asked for her greatest memory of her “legendary” career, she pointed to the lawsuit she and her teammates filed against the U.S. Soccer Federation over alleged pay inequality. Gender pay inequality is a myth and a lie, no different from other popular corporate media narratives like climate change and the alleged genocidal homicide of unarmed black men.

But the truth is irrelevant in the making of an Alphabet Mafia icon. Megan Rapinoe is the George Floyd of soccer. Racism and sexism are the only things that prevented them from being president and vice president of the United States.

Or maybe Rapinoe is just another narcissistic, greedy, entitled celebrity.

Could you imagine Joe Montana or Michael Jordan summarizing their careers by referencing a contract dispute?

Rapinoe is a fraud. She’s the Colin Kaepernick of soccer. Her attitude poisoned the women’s national soccer team. Let’s hope her side effects don’t linger.

[gamergirl929]

A Megan Rapinoe corner led to an Emily Sonnett goal, THIS IS WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF.

[alexbkrieger13]

These new FC Bayern stars only come in a double pack

The top soccer players Pernille Harder and Magdalena Eriksson are moving to Munich on July 1st. What connects the two privately and on the pitch.

On her first day on Grünwalder Strasse, Pernille Harder internalized what was faltering at FC Bayern Munich . She had hardly signed the new professional contract when the Danish record striker reminded the fans of the club's motto in Bavarian: "Mia san mia!" Interestingly, "mia" is short for "billion" in Danish. The FCB men's squad is worth almost a billion, but as is well known, it has often lacked the much-vaunted Munich feeling of togetherness. 

Just as close as the men, the women's team of the record champions also won their fifth title this year, but with significantly less noise. In the 2023/2024 season, the championship is again the declared goal of the women - and in 30-year-old Pernille Harder they have signed one of the best offensive players in the world. She doesn't come alone: ​​Swedish defensive expert Magdalena Eriksson, Harder's partner, has also signed a professional contract with FC Bayern until 2026 . Both were previously on the pitch at Chelsea, winning the English Championship and the FA Women's Cup with the Blues. 

Harder and Eriksson are used to playing together – privately since 2014, twice in the same team on the pitch: in 2016 they won the Swedish championship with Linköpings FC, in 2020 Harder followed her friend to London .

She knows the Bundesliga from her time at VfL Wolfsburg: Between 2017 and 2020, Harder shot the Wolves to the championship and the cup four times. When she moved to London, she was the most expensive soccer player in the world at a transfer fee of 330,000 euros. Both players are coming to Bayern Munich on a free transfer.

Leaving Chelsea was a tearful one, especially for Magdalena Eriksson. For four years she was captain of the blues. When she was presented with the framed jersey with the number 16 in the Kingsmeadow stadium with its 4,800 seats in mid-May, the 29-year-old lost her voice. "I love you guys," she said to the fans, "and I want to say thank you for everything." It's good that her friend was standing next to her at that moment, grabbing the microphone and completing the parting words. Since the time at Chelsea, the two have only been in a double pack. "It means a lot to me that we can move here together and stay together," said Harder in Munich , "we already had a long-distance relationship, we don't want that again."

Off the pitch, Harder and Eriksson campaign for LGBTIQ rights

The sporting director of the FCB women, Bianca Rech, is convinced that these two can "make the difference" in the Munich game. Harder and Eriksson are also "incredible personalities" off the pitch. Anyone who follows them on Instagram knows about their commitment to LGBTIQ rights. Incidentally, her beliefs flow into the posts, Eriksson wears them as a tattoo on his shoulder. "We are all human and we shouldn't judge anyone," it says in Swedish. Among her followers is world-famous British top model Cara Delevingne , herself a queer activist. In addition to the square, the boulevard has long since discovered the two, but the couple rarely gets involved in advertising deals and photo shoots:in pink tulle skirts and hoodies. They have been moderating the talk show “The Hangout” for Sky Sports since 2022. Soccer stars like Megan Rapinoe talk about their experiences as queer athletes. 

In the Bundesliga, both also want to develop individually. "Seeing the German national team play at the European Championships last summer shows how the Bundesliga is developing"Harder says in the welcome video on Bayern's YouTube channel. "I'm excited to be back in the league." Her partner has no experience of the Bundesliga. In European football, however, she is a star and was nominated for the Ballon d'Or in 2021 and was voted into the Women's World Cup that same year, which she attributes to her hunger for wins: "One of my greatest talents as a footballer is that I've always had this urge to constantly improve", says Eriksson in the video. "Taking on a new challenge only makes me hungrier for success and for learning more." But she can also be modest: "Coming into a new football culture and a new team, that makes me humble."

[leveloneandup]

Megan Rapinoe celebrates Team United States first goal during the Women's Gold Medal match between Brazil and United States of America during the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Parc des Princes on August 10, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photos by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

[incorrectnwsl]

exactly Vlatko needs to coach, Alex is doing her normal US style and Sophia and Trin are playing like they do at club and those things are all different, he also makes things worse by putting Demleo in who is a great player but is a literal stranger to the entire front line so they are getting balls fed to them by someone they have never played with. its so frustrating because yes some players need to do better but his decisions make things so much worse.

I would love to see a lineup like this:

Alyssa in goal, backline mostly unchanged except move Julie to midfield and put Alana Cook back in CB. I'd also like to see KO come in at half for Foxy, not that she isn't doing fine, but KO.

And take Lindsey out, she's tired Vlatko. Start Rose and Kristie. Maybe Linds can come off the bench later, but rest that leg. We could even try Sanchez off the bench, like you brought 23 players, USE THEM.

Then front line we need Lynn, Alex, and Soph. Trin can come in as a sub at halftime. Megan Rapinoe supersub. And depending on how it goes maybe Alyssa Thompson subs in near the end.

[void-argent]

LFG WORLD CUP ROSTER DROP

enjoy this short essay of my thoughts:

I pretty much saw like 85% of this roster coming

tbh seeing alyssa thompson and savannah demelo was WILD for me, but that's because I haven't really been able to keep up with the nwsl as much as I would like so they kinda threw me for a loop

ok but let me talk about how happy I was to see GIRMA, ERTZ, SONNETT, KELLEY, K MEW, AND EMILY FOX

listen I was so stressed that I wasn't gonna get the chest bump bros at the world cup YOU DONT UNDERSTAND

and I am so damn proud of naomi girma, like she has had such an impact on this team and I'm so glad that we have her now that captain becky isn't there (still not over it)

fox is a killer, I love watching her play, she's gonna do great

lynn deserves this so much she has been kicking ass

sophia smith ily goal scoring machine

I also wanna take a sec to shout out all the sonnett haters SUCK IT

I have complete and total faith in alyssa ' brick wall' naeher, alex 'and that's the tea' morgan, julie ' the tank' ertz, and megan 'I'm not going to the fucking white house' rapinoe.

HOWEVER, I do have some.... let's call them.... idk's -> alana cook has just not left me with the best impression, I think she's slow on defense and isn't very aggressive with the ball, she has very rare good moments. sof huerta has just had a very meh performance for the uswnt IN MY OPINION I don't think she's very consistent. alyssa thompson I think is just too young, not to say that she couldn't completely kill it, but I just don't know if she can perform on the world's biggest stage, cause that's totally different than an nwsl game. sanchez and rodman for me have just not shown their true potential on the uswnt, like I'm still waiting for them to really show up, maybe with the cup on the line they will.

all in all, I think this is a very solid roster. obviously, we are missing some key players due to injury (press, heath, becky, sammy, mal just to name a few) and I would love nothing more than for them to be there, BUT I think these are the best 23 players we have right now. we are gonna have a kick ass starting 11 XI and some killer subs.

that being said LETS FUCKING GO WIN THIS THING!!

ps: I'm gonna be way more active leading up to and through the entire world cup so feel free to send me questions, comments, opinions, or whatever you want.

pps: CAN YOU BELIEVE TAYLOR SWIFT ANNOUNCED ALEX FOR THE ROSTER? LOVE IT WHEN MY WORLDS COLLIDE (there were other cool celebs aka queen olivia benson, john cena, gabrielle union, and SHAQ but I'm first and foremost a swiftie)