Megan Rapinoe will retire after the 2023 season at age 38, ending her soccer career before the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Rapinoe laughed when she said she has “probably known for, like, a year” that she would retire now.
“Honestly, since the final whistle in Lyon [in the 2019 World Cup Final], that’s been sort of a question I’ve been grappling with, struggling with a lot, but I think over the course of the back half of last year and coming into this season, I’ve talked about it so much,” she said. “I feel like I processed a lot with [fiancée] Sue [Bird] and just her decision to retire over the last couple of years. I feel as excited to play the rest of my career as I do to retire and to step away from this beautiful game.”
The World Cup that starts later this month will be her final major tournament with the national team.
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.
“I could have just like never imagined where this beautiful game would have taken me,” she said. “It’s truly been the greatest thing that I’ve ever done.”
It is with a deep sense of peace & gratitude that I have decided this will be my final season playing this beautiful game. I never could have imagined the ways in which soccer would shape & change my life forever, but by the look on this little girl’s face, she knew all along. pic.twitter.com/XGZ1T9i7Wy
— Megan Rapinoe (@mPinoe) July 8, 2023
