Megan Rapinoe
Megan Rapinoe will retire after the 2023 season at age 38, ending her soccer career before the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The World Cup that starts later this month will be her final major tournament with the national team.
“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," she said, according to U.S. Soccer. "To be able to play one last World Cup and one last NWSL season and go out on my own terms is incredibly special."
Rapinoe, who turned 38 on Wednesday, played at all three Olympics and all three World Cups from 2011 through 2021, winning one gold medal and two World Cup titles. In 2019, she was the Golden Ball and Golden Boot winner at the World Cup, plus the overall world player of the year.
She was the oldest player named to this year's World Cup team.
Had Rapinoe tried to make the 2024 Olympic team, she would have bid to become the oldest U.S. Olympic soccer player in history (by a matter of days over Carli Lloyd) and join a group of three to play in four Games (Lloyd, Tobin Heath and Christie Pearce Rampone).
Rapinoe saw reduced minutes for a deep U.S. attack in recent years. At the Tokyo Olympics, she started three of six matches, scoring twice in the bronze-medal match win over Australia before being subbed out in the 60th minute.
She came back from a December 2015 right ACL tear to make the 2016 Olympics, where she was limited to 60 total minutes in two appearances. At her first Olympics in 2012, she scored two goals in an epic semifinal win over Canada.
It is more difficult to make an Olympic team, with 18 players plus alternates, than a World Cup team, with 23 players.
