Megan Rapinoe Quotes

When you know yourself and your strengths, there is always something you can do to raise the standard for everyone.

You can’t win a championship without gays on your team. It’s pretty much never been done before, ever. That’s science, right there. —Megan Rapinoe

Real change lies within all of us. It is in the choices we make every day. It's in how we talk, who we hire, and what we permit others to say in our presence. It's in reading more, thinking more, considering a different perspective. At its simplest, it's in whether we're willing to spend even five minutes a day thinking about how we can make the world better.

Besides which, no matter what shape protests against racism take, they are always met with the accusation that while the principle might be right, the execution is wrong.

The church she went to was one of those supposedly liberal ones that pretends to be accepting but actually preaches “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” Which is, of course, motherfucking-ass homophobic. It’s so much worse than regular homophobia, because these people don’t think they’re homophobic. You’re homophobic! And you’re hiding behind Christianity!

Real change lies within all of us. It is in the choices we make every day. It’s in how we talk, who we hire, and what we permit others to say in our presence. It’s in reading more, thinking more, considering a different perspective. At it’s simplest, it’s in whether we’re willing to spend even five minutes a day thinking about how we can make the world better.

This is my charge to everybody, Do what you can. Do what you have to do—step outside of yourself. Be more. Be better. Be bigger than you’ve ever been before.

We can advocate for our families, or in the service of a cause or campaign, but if we’re simply asking for more money on our own behalf and because we have the temerity to believe we deserve it, we are liable to be called greedy.

Let’s go - really, let’s go.

The national team players were in camp in Orlando, Florida, preparing for a pair of friendlies against Colombia when Rich Nichols and Jeffrey Kessler scheduled a conference call with the players on the team’s CBA committee. It was then that Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Megan Rapinoe were presented with the idea of filing a wage-discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, against U.S. Soccer. If the players agreed to sign on, they would be asking a government agency to investigate whether U.S. Soccer was violating U.S. laws against workplace discrimination. In other words, the players were going to publicly accuse U.S. Soccer of discriminating against the women’s national team. It was a move guaranteed to ratchet up the tension between the national team and the federation. “I was nervous about that call the entire week because, in essence, what we were asking these great players to do was to sue their current employer for wage discrimination,” Nichols says. “That takes huge courage from anybody.

The final straw for the players was a game scheduled in Hawaii at Aloha Stadium during the victory tour. No one from U.S. Soccer had gone to inspect the facilities before scheduling the national team to play there. The practice field was grass, but it was patchy, bumpy, and lined with sewer plates that had plastic coverings. It was on that sub-par practice field that Megan Rapinoe tore her ACL, which meant she might have to miss the 2016 Olympics the next year. Then, the next day, the players got to the stadium where they were supposed to play the game. Not only was it artificial turf, but the players were concerned by the seams on the field where parts of the turf were pulling up off the ground. Sharp rocks were embedded all over the field. If someone from U.S. Soccer had been there beforehand to inspect it, there’s no way they could’ve believed it was an appropriate venue for a national team soccer match. The players unanimously agreed to boycott the match and stand up to the federation together. The federation officially cancelled the match, and Sunil Gulati, the president of U.S. Soccer, publicly apologized, calling it “a black eye for this organization.” The players seemed more determined than they had been in a long time to fight for themselves.

The group stage in Canada didn’t provide any reassuring answers. The Americans did score first in their opening match vs. Australia, but it was a half-chance from Megan Rapinoe that took a lucky deflection. Before that, Hope Solo had been called on to make a spectacularly acrobatic save. They eventually routed Australia, 3–1, but Solo was the hero of the match more than any of the goal-scorers. “Hope came up absolutely huge for us,” Rapinoe said afterward. “I think she had three saves that nobody else in the world could make.

The Americans didn’t know it yet, however, but that win over Colombia was serendipitous in an unexpected way. Yellow cards given to both Lauren Holiday (née Cheney) and Megan Rapinoe meant that Jill Ellis would be forced to change her tactics. The team was about to fix all of its midfield problems. A blessing in disguise was about to save the USA’s World Cup. It was about to unleash Carli Lloyd. Up to that point in the tournament, Lloyd had been asked to play alongside Lauren Holiday in an ill-defined central midfield partnership. Neither one of them was a defensive midfielder, and neither one of them was an attacking midfielder. They were expected to split those duties between them on the fly. That not only led to gaping holes and poor positioning in the midfield, but it restrained Lloyd, who throughout her career was best as a pure attacking player who could push forward without restraint.