Connect with us

Latest News

Can Rapinoe avoid another ‘sick joke’ in last NWSL playoffs?

Published

11 months ago

on

By

The end of the road for Megan Rapinoe: Retiring USWNT icon out to avoid another ‘sick joke’ as OL Reign go for NWSL playoff glory

The American star will hang up her cleats when the 2023 season ends, but will that conclude in yet another trophy or more 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.

So when this year’s NWSL playoffs conclude on November 11 in San Diego, will Rapinoe have added her name to that list? Or will the final chapter of her career have another unwanted conclusion?

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.

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.

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.

See also  Man City worry United with move for rising star Mainoo

“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.

Rapinoe has done her fair share to help the Reign get one over on Portland in the past decade, but never for a prize bigger than bragging rights. If the pair were to meet in the 2023 playoffs, it would be in the Championship game. What an incredible way to close her career that could be.

It’s not just Rapinoe’s retirement that makes success for the Reign a narrative that some of the neutrals will get behind in these playoffs, either. Alongside the USWNT icon for the past 11 years have been both Fishlock and Lauren ‘Lu’ Barnes, the latter a true model of consistency for the club and the former, as a Wales international, one of the NWSL’s greatest ever imports. Both have also played a huge part in those incredible Reign teams that have dazzled fans and come so close to the ultimate glory.

“I think that being able to spend 11 years and a long part of my career, a lot of my prime, I’m even extending that right now because I’ve still been doing well, it’s just fun to be able to do it with people like Lu and Pinoe,” Fishlock told Indivisa earlier this year.

“It really is a gift to be able to go through all of this with two of the same kind of people who have just pushed you, hold you to a higher level, hold you to a higher standard and make sure that you don’t drop. All of that together is why the longevity has stayed there.”

The sight of the three ‘OGs’ sat together in a press conference after Rapinoe’s send-off game in October, wearing matching sunglasses, laughing and joking about the idea of Rapinoe paying into a retirement fund and the last of Barnes and Fishlock to hang up their boots getting to collect it, perfectly captured the essence of the camaraderie they have built up over the past decade.

“These are really special moments,” Barnes said of Rapinoe’s final weeks with the club. “I don’t think we ever took it for granted in our 11 years here, one bit. That’s how Pinoe lives, right? She lives in that joy and for those moments and she pushes us to also do that.”

Barnes and Fishlock might have further opportunities beyond this season, but 2023 will be the last chance for this trio to win a Championship together.

So, how will it all end? Sometimes it feels like the conclusions to these stories can be written in the stars, but Rapinoe knows full well that it can go the other way, too. After all, she experienced that very thing in Australia earlier this year.

The 38-year-old was playing the role of an impact substitute during the USWNT’s 2023 Women’s World Cup campaign, and while she couldn’t make a big enough difference off the bench in its last 16 tie with Sweden to stop the game from going to a decisive penalty shootout, she had the chance to help the reigning champion edge towards the quarter-finals, only to send her spot-kick well over the bar.

Usually so reliable from 12 yards, the disbelief on Rapinoe’s face was evident. She laughed, even. A two-time World Cup winner, recipient of the Golden Ball and Golden Boot awards four years prior and a player who had stolen the entire show as the U.S. retained its 2015 crown, was about to bow out from the biggest stage with a shocker of a penalty as the most successful team in tournament history suffered its earliest exit of all-time.

“I mean this is like a sick joke for me personally. I’m just like, ‘This is dark comedy that I missed a penalty’,” she said afterwards, but added: “I still just feel really grateful and joyful. I know it’s the end and that’s sad, but to know this is really the only time I’ve been in one of these shows, how much success I’ve had and how much I’ve loved playing for this team… It’s been an honor.”

And that feels like the difference here. Of course, the World Cup is the absolute pinnacle and to say goodbye to it in the way Rapinoe did will have been extremely disappointing. But she’s conquered that stage.

The NWSL Championship is the major title missing from an illustrious career. To retire without that, with the chances the Reign has had to win it, maybe Rapinoe wouldn’t have regrets given she has done all she can to try and guide her team to glory, but it’d surely feel like a bit of a “sick joke” of its own.

But maybe it won’t go that way. Maybe this could be one of those occasions where everything does align and sport follows the Hollywood script. Maybe the heartbreak and the close calls of the last 11 years have been building up to this perfect moment.

It felt like that could be the case in OL Reign’s first round playoff match, Rapinoe’s final ever game in Seattle, as the home side found an 87th-minute goal to secure passage to the semi-finals at the expense of Angel City.

On Sunday, the Reign is looking to end the hopes of the league’s other Californian side, travelling to the Golden State to face the San Diego Wave, the NWSL Shield winners. The team that emerges victorious will play in the NWSL Championship game, which will be hosted at the Wave’s Snapdragon Stadium. The home side has plenty of motivation, then, and goes into the match after doing remarkably well to lift silverware in just its second ever season. But the Reign will look to spoil the party and ensure Rapinoe’s farewell tour has another date added to it – in the same city on November 11.

“I don’t think it’s like the best career anyone has ever had, but it’s the best career that I could’ve had,” Rapinoe said recently. An NWSL Championship triumph would only add to that feeling of fulfilment and put the cherry on the cake as one of the most captivating players the women’s game has ever seen continues her last dance.

Related Topics:
Comments

Trending