The U.S. star will play her final match in Saturday's Championship game in San Diego. Will it bring her the trophy she craves or total heartbreak?
"A sick joke". That’s how Megan Rapinoe described her final kick of a ball at a Women’s World Cup, having blazed her penalty over the bar in a dramatic shootout that ended in the United States women’s national team suffering its earliest ever elimination. But the iconic forward isn’t done yet. There’s still one last dance before she calls time on her career – and in some ways it is even more significant than the World Cup.
Since the NWSL, the top-flight of women’s soccer in the U.S., was founded in 2013, Rapinoe has represented the same club, OL Reign. The team has consistently been one of the best in the division, qualifying for the playoffs seven times, winning three NWSL Shields – the award given to the side that finishes top of the regular season standings – and reaching the NWSL Championship game twice. Yet, that Championship title has continued to elude Rapinoe and the Reign.
Most of the names that have delivered major tournament success to the USWNT alongside the 38-year-old in the past decade or so have had the honor of hoisting that trophy high above their heads. Alex Morgan, Becky Sauerbrunn, Tobin Heath, Crystal Dunn, Kelley O’Hara, Lauren Holiday, Heather O’Reilly, Amy Rodriguez, Sam Mewis, Emily Sonnett, Jessica McDonald – we could go on and on.
But Rapinoe has one last chance at glory in the NWSL Championship game on November 11. When full -time comes, will she have added her name to that list? Or will the final chapter of her career have another unwanted conclusion?
GettyEarly domination
After a difficult first season in the NWSL, the Seattle Reign – as it was known then – certainly found its feet. Across the 2014 and 2015 campaigns, the team lost just five of its 44 regular season matches.
Seattle finished 13 points clear at the top of the 2014 standings, having scored more and conceded fewer than any other side. Indeed, its +30 goal difference was far and away the best in the division. Kansas City, in second place, was closest with +7. It was a similar story in 2015 as the Reign won back-to-back Shields.
The team was an absolute dream to watch. Current Arsenal captain Kim Little ran the show in the centre of the park, with Jess Fishlock working in tandem with the Scot to form an excellent midfield partnership – and the forward line they were feeding was deadly.
Japan star Nahomi Kawasumi was magical on the ball, World Cup winner Sydney Leroux brought plenty of excitement, Bev Yanez bagged goals aplenty and Rapinoe was a nightmare for any full-back she came up against. With an excellent coach at the helm, in Laura Harvey, the Reign so often looked unbeatable – until it didn’t.
AdvertisementGettyFalling short
Despite comfortably being the best team in the league in 2014 and 2015, and reaching the Championship game both years, Seattle just couldn’t get the job done at the end. Kansas City, coached by future USWNT head coach Vlatko Andonovski, defeated the Reign on both occasions to win back-to-back Championship titles.
While expressing disappointment after the 2014 defeat, Rapinoe wasn’t too downbeat when talking to the press. There was a clear feeling that this wouldn’t be her final shot at this title. After all, it was only the NWSL’s second-ever season.
“When you look around our locker room and see the squad that we have, to not win it at the end is unfortunate, to know that we won the Shield [and were] the best team in the league during the regular season," she said. “But I think that this club also has a long-term goal as well. It’s not just about this year. We have a future that we are looking forward to and it will be a little bit interrupted over the next couple years [with the World Cup and the Olympics], but hopefully after that we can keep the foundation and keep going from there.”
Had you told Rapinoe then that nine years on, Seattle would fall short of reaching the Championship game again in seven of the following eight seasons, she’d have likely been surprised.
GettyDifficulties and disappointments
Until now, that shot at the title in 2015 was indeed the Reign’s last. After failing to reach the playoffs in 2016 and 2017, Harvey stepped down as head coach. She recommended Andonovski to replace her and that he did, guiding the club into the postseason in each of his two years in the Pacific Northwest. The team wouldn't get to the Championship game, but there were positive signs there, particularly in 2019 when Andonovski guided it into the playoffs despite a heap of injuries – Rapinoe among them.
If there was a foundation for Andonovski’s successor to build on though, the hopes of the Reign doing so were dashed by a chaotic couple of years. Covid-19 meant the 2020 campaign was cancelled, replaced by a month-long Challenge Cup and the NWSL Fall Series, which itself lasted just short of six weeks.
Then, midway through 2021, head coach Farid Benstiti, who had replaced Andonovski, resigned after the Reign had lost five of its first eight regular season games and generally underwhelmed during his spell in charge. He would later be named in the Yates Report, which documented the abusive behaviour and sexual misconduct in the NWSL, for weight-shaming players.
Interim coach Sam Laity and latterly the returning Harvey did an excellent job at steering the team into the 2021 playoffs despite all of this, but going beyond the first round was a step too far.
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Getty ImagesSalt in the wound
What has made that seven-year absence from the NWSL Championship game all the more difficult for fans of the Reign to swallow – if not those involved with the club itself – has been the success of its biggest rival.
No team in NWSL history has won more Championship titles than the Portland Thorns – and the Reign hate the Thorns. The feeling is mutual, too. In fact, when the Championship game took place at Portland’s Providence Park in 2015, fans of the Thorns showed up in numbers to cheer Kansas City on to victory over the Reign. “This actually was the moment that made me realize the rivalry,” Jocelyne Houghton, one of the vice-presidents of the Royal Guard, the Reign supporters’ group, told GOAL earlier this year.
Portland won the first ever NWSL Championship title in 2013 and triumphed in both 2017 and 2022, too. The club also has two Shields in its trophy cabinet, from 2016 and 2021, and a Challenge Cup. Oh, and it knocked the Reign out of the playoffs in 2018.
“From a significance point of a friend, I’m incredibly proud and happy for Pinoe to have this type of send-off and I hope we really f*ck it up this weekend,” Meghan Klingenberg, the Thorns defender who won the 2015 Women’s World Cup alongside Rapinoe, said ahead of the forward's final trip to Portland in September. "We don’t give a f*ck that Megan Rapinoe is coming to town and it’s her last game [here].”
Christine Sinclair, the Thorns captain, echoed the sentiment, albeit with a quote requiring fewer asterisks. “I’m going to miss playing against her, this rivalry is going to miss having her and our fans are going to miss booing her,” she said.
In an alternate universe, Portland beat Gotham in the playoff semi-finals and this Pacific Northwest derby has been brought to the Championship game for the first time. That's not the one we live in, though. Rapinoe won't have the chance to help her team secure the ultimate bragging rights this weekend, then, but she could at least set the Reign on its way to trying to catch up the title haul of its biggest rival before she signs off.