Tag: soccer

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Legend

Megan Rapinoe may not be the greatest player ever to take the field for the USWNT, though she’s not too far down the top ten list after the likes of Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, and Abby Wambach.

But Rapinoe’s legacy may be greater than any other.

She long will be celebrated as an icon for her leadership off the field in the fight for equal pay, calling out racism, and her personal work to advance LGBTQ awareness.  

Rapinoe leveraged her performance in the 2019 FIFA World Cup tournament — she won the Golden Ball as the best player and the Golden Boot as the leading scorer to lead the USA to its second straight championship — into a worldwide platform on which to advocate for social change. 

Led by Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, 28 USWNT players filed a civil rights lawsuit that forced US  Soccer to negotiate a Collective Bargaining Agreement that covers national team players regardless of gender — pooling all prize money and other revenues for equal distribution. The effect has been worldwide, spurring demands for equal treatment and mutual respect by several other women’s national teams, especially in France and Spain.

Members of the USWNT wore Black Lives Matter shirts during warmups and took a knee during the national anthem before a November 2020 friendly with the Netherlands. US Soccer banned such acts after Rapinoe first knelt during the anthem in 2016. The team issued a joint statement saying the protest against racial injustice was an affirmation of human decency.

Rapinoe has also opened up her personal life to public scrutiny, after coming out as lesbian and celebrating her relationship with WNBA legend Sue Bird.

None of Rapinoe’s outspoken leadership was without risk. For taking up these righteous causes, she has been targeted by those who oppose the ideals of equity and inclusion. Yet she has endured with the same poise and grace and bravery she displays on the field.

Rapinoe bowed out of the World Cup this week with a miss in the penalty shootout and the top-ranked USA team fell to third-ranked Sweden. Obviously, it was not the ending she would have scripted for herself or her team.

Hopefully, she will be celebrated with a proper send-off later this year, as she closes her national team career with friendlies against South Africa. We should honor her leadership and her legacy, as much as her athletic accomplishments, and thank her for working to make the world more fair and equitable.

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Adeus, Marta

In the end, the great Marta was on the field embracing the promising Jamaican striker Bunny Shaw, who put her hand to her chest and poured out her admiration and thanks in a beautiful, intimate post-game exchange.

“I just told her that she’s not just an inspiration for me, but for a lot of young girls in the Caribbean and around the world,” Shaw said, according to The Associated Press.

At the time Shaw took up the sport, Marta was just stepping into greatness. 

She was named FIFA Player of the Year in 2006, the first of five consecutive years in which she won the award. She won a sixth as well, in 2018. A five-time Olympian, she has also played in six World Cups and holds the all-time scoring record, women or men, with 17 goals. She won the Golden Ball and the Golden Boot in the 2007 tournament. She has scored more and played longer than any other woman, and is widely considered the greatest of all time.

Brazil failed to make it through the group stage. Marta, at age 37, did not score in this, her final World Cup run, but her legend will endure.

“When I started playing, I didn’t have an idol, a female idol. You guys didn’t show any female games. How was I supposed to see other players? How I was I supposed to understand that I could arrive at a national team and become a reference?” Marta told the assembled media after the game.

“Today we have our own references,” she said, adding she is often stopped on the streets by parents who say their daughters want to be just like Marta. “This wouldn’t have happened if we had stopped in the first obstacles that we faced. … And it didn’t start just with me, but with a lot of the women back then.”

Shaw is among the legion of players who have aspired to the greatness Marta achieved, and they are now ready to pick up that mantle.

“I’m very happy with all that has been happening in women’s football in Brazil and in the world. Keep supporting,” Marta said, her eyes filled with tears. “Because for them, it’s just the beginning. For me, it’s the end of the line now.”

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Swansongs

Amid all the excitement about increasing parity in the women’s game at this year’s World Cup, the excitement of greater competition will be tempered for many longtime fans as three of the all-time greats in women’s soccer likely bid farewell.

Marta, Brazil

Team Brazil forward Marta (10)

Perhaps the greatest to play the women’s game, Marta has been a presence at every World Cup since 2007, when she scored seven goals to claim the Golden Ball as the top player and the Golden Boot as the top individual scorer.

She was named FIFA World Player of the Year five years running, from 2006-2010, and again in 2018. Though she has never won the World Cup, her legacy is cemented.  She led Brazil in a victory over the USA U-20 Team at the Pan American Games in front of 60,000 fans in Maracana in 2006 and was compared by fans to national idol Pele, who called to congratulate her after the win.

At 37, with 174 international caps and 115 goals (10th all-time), Marta is unlikely to play in another FIFA World Cup tournament after Australia/New Zealand.

Christine Sinclair, Canada

This will be Sinclair’s sixth World Cup and probably her last. 

Sinclair has not yet announced her plans, but in a recent interview with Maclean’s, she was asked about retiring. “For me, it’s all about enjoyment. Can you stay healthy? Because it’s no fun if you’re not healthy,” Sinclair said in the interview. “And are you still enjoying it? Are you still waking up every day knowing this is what you want to do?”

Sinclair, who last month celebrated her 40th birthday, led Canada to the Gold Medal in the 2021 Olympics. She has 323 international appearances and has scored 190 international goals (and 54 assists) — more goals than any other player, ahead of even Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.

She has been shortlisted for FIFA World Player of the Year seven times, right behind Marta in four of those years.

Megan Rapinoe, USA 

Just before the send-off game with Wales, Rapinoe announced she would retire at the end of the current NWSL season, making this her final World Cup campaign.

“I feel incredibly grateful to have played as long as I have, to be as successful as we’ve been, and to have been a part of a generation of players who undoubtedly left the game better than they found it,” Rapinoe said in a statement. “To be able to play one last World Cup  and one last NWSL season and go out on my own terms is incredibly special.”

She led the USA to the last World Cup in 2019 in France, winning the Golden Ball as the best player of the tournament and the Golden Boot as the leading scorer. The same year, Sports Illustrated named her i’s “Sportsperson of the Year.”

Rapinoe turned 38 on July 5 and has 199 international appearances. She has more assists, 78, than goals, 63, but is third all-time in assists. ranks third all-time than goals. She is the only player, male or female, to score an Olimpico (a corner kick for a goal) at the Olympic Games, and she’s done it twice.

Rapinoe is regarded as much for her off-the-field leadership on pay and equity and LGBTQ representation as she is for her stellar on-field performances.

This trio of legends has had a tremendous impact on the women’s game, and this World Cup offers a final opportunity to appreciate their contributions.

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FIFA: Women, officially

A glass ceiling will be shattered today in Qatar, of all places.

An all-female crew will officiate a FIFA men’s World Cup match for the first time ever when Germany takes on Costa Rica at Al-Bayt Stadium.

UPDATE: In testimony to the competence of the all-female crew, the match was played without any controversy over the on-field decision-making amid intense competition. Germany beat Costa Rica 4-2 but failed to advance on goal differential versus Spain.

The crew will be led on the pitch by head referee Stephanie Frappart of France. She will be assisted by Neuza Back of Brazil and Karen Diaz Medina of Mexico

This is no low-stakes, back-of-the-desert, inconsequential appearance. It is an important match on a big stage where an upstart Costa Rican side takes on traditional powerhouse Germany with both teams looking to win and advance out of group play. 

The effect of the decision reaches beyond the field of play. 

The officiating assignment could be taken as subtle imprinting by FIFA on the tournament in a nation where women are relegated to second-class citizenship — they need a male guardian’s permission to marry, work, travel, and even study.

The tournament has been roiled by controversy over social issues, starting with the treatment and deaths of of immigrant workers who constructed the stadiums to Qatar i officials surprising FIFA two days before the tournament by banning the sale of beer inside stadiums, even after it took $75 million from Budweiser as a tournament sponsor. Qatar, a Muslim nation, strictly regulates alcohol. Beer and liquor sales in the stadium were limited to VIP areas.

Qatar also cracked down on demonstrations of support for human rights, specifically refusing to allow the German team to wear “One Love” armbands and preventing ticket holders from carrying rainbow flags in a country where same-sex relationships are outlawed. A social media video showed police refusing entry to a fan wearing a T-shirt that read “Women. Life. Freedom.” in support of anti-government protests in Iran.

But the assignment also could be taken as a sign that FIFA is coming to grips with its own unequal treatment of women in a sport where, according to estimates by Statista, 37% of football fans worldwide are women, and the women’s World Cup in 2019 drew a total television audience exceeding 1.1 billion viewers.

In May, FIFA announced the officials selected for the World Cup matches, the head referee pool of 36 included three women: Frappart, Yoshimi Yamashita of Japan, and Salima Mukasanga of Brazil.  The pool of 69 assistant referees also included three women: Back, Díaz, and Kathryn Nesbitt of the United States.

FIFA said at the time it wants to make the appointment of women referees in men’s competitions more commonplace, and has been deploying women in men’s senior and junior tournaments as a sort of proving ground.

“In this way, we clearly emphasize that it is quality that counts for us and not gender,” said Pierluigi Collina, chair of the FIFA Referees Committee. “I would hope that in the future, the selection of elite women’s match officials for important men’s competitions will be perceived as something normal and no longer as sensational.”

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Oh, Baby

Congrats to USWNT star Alex Morgan and LA Galaxy midfielder Servando Carrasco, who announced yesterday they are expecting their first child in April.

Screen shot of @alexmorgan13 Twitter post
Alex Morgan announces her pregnancy via Twitter

The timing is remarkable. Morgan is due ten months after leading the US Women to a fourth World Cup (That’s some way to celebrate!) and three months before the opening of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Morgan reportedly is planning on being a part of the Olympic team, but just the question of whether she would play highlights one of the unique issues female athletes face: How and when to have children. At 30, Morgan is in her athletic prime, and at a point where many women have started or have decided to start families. She and Carrasco met as first-year students at the University of California-Berkeley in 2007 and have been married five years, so wanting to start a family seems, well, not so surprising.

The inherent unfairness is that while the decision has little affect on Carrasco’s athletic career, it could (will) profoundly affect Morgan’s.

For example, Serena Williams took a year off competitive tennis when she had a child. Her return, at age 37, was somewhat fraught. She made the finals in three major tournaments but didn’t win them, and she has dropped in the rankings to 9th in the world. On the other hand, Kerry Walsh Jennings was five weeks pregnant when she won her third beach volleyball gold medal at the 2010 Olympics in London and Scottish golfer Catriona Matthew won the British Open less than three months after delivering her second daughter.

Closer to home, one-time USWNT player Sydney Leroux rejoined the Orlando Pride in September, three months after she gave birth. (That’s about the same time Morgan stepped away from, citing a nagging knee injury sustained in the World Cup.)

Some things transcend sport. Family lives are a prime case.

But, even so, here’s hoping we see Morgan on the pitch in Tokyo, and maybe Carrasco in the stands with their healthy baby in his arms.