Megan Rapinoe Answers the Critics

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I'm Hannah Rosen, and this is a bonus episode of Radio Atlantic.

Reporters here at the magazine interview lots of interesting people, and when it makes sense, we like to share some of those conversations with you, our listeners.

This week, we're bringing you an interview that my colleague Frank Ford did with the U.S.

women's soccer icon, Megan Rapino.

A couple of weeks ago, we did an episode about the Women's World Cup and we interviewed two longtime players for the U.S.

soccer team.

That was before the U.S.

was eliminated on penalty kicks with a decisive miss from Megan Rapino.

And if that wasn't heartbreaking enough, it was her last game before retiring from the team.

In that episode, I asked the players, kind of joking, kind of not, whether it might be better for global women's soccer if the U.S.

lost.

Better competition, and better chance for other countries to reach pay equity the way the U.S.

did.

Well, here we are.

The U.S.

did lose, and Spain won.

So, what does Rapino think now?

Just to note that we spoke to Rapino on the phone, not in a studio.

So, it's not the best audio, but totally worth it.

Frank, you are about to interview Megan Rapino.

What is exciting about that?

Why her?

Well, who wouldn't want to talk to Megan Rapino?

I mean, she, in addition to being one of the greatest players in the history of the U.S.

game, in addition to being one of the greatest political players in the history of U.S.

sports.

And so when she voices an opinion, it's an opinion that you genuinely think is, you know, it's an authentic opinion.

And so coming off of this World Cup, when the U.S.

underperformed and when so many other interesting things were happening in other aspects of the tournament, I'm just dying to know what she makes of it all.

Yeah.

I mean, you and I before this tournament were inching towards the heretical question,

would it be better if the U.S.

loses the tournament?

I actually asked this question and it happened.

I mean, they not only lost, they weren't in the top 16.

And I am wondering what that means.

Like, how do you think that plays with the players themselves?

Well, I think on some level, they must have known that this was coming.

One of the things that was striking about this team is that they didn't play with the swagger and confidence that we had come to expect of the U.S.

team.

But

the lack of self-confidence that was so apparent, I think, to anybody that watched them inevitably traces back to this issue of how the rest of the world has finally built the infrastructure to not just catch up to the U.S., but obviously to exceed exceed it in certain ways.

Yeah, I mean, if you watched England play, you watched the final.

Of course.

England, Spain.

They played like with so much more momentum than the U.S.

played.

I think the heretical thing to say is that both Spain and England played at a level that was higher than the U.S.

did when it won in 2019 and 2015.

Oof.

Are you going to ask her that?

Are you going to say that to Megan Rupee?

Not to her face, no.

The other thing I thought about is there there was a lot of controversy on the Span team.

Well, so you had a core of players on this team who'd grown up through FC Barcelona's academy system.

And so in about 2010, Barcelona decided to make all these massive investments in women's soccer.

And so you have players like Aetina Bon Mati, who grew up knowing what it was like to play in a quality work environment when you had the best coaches and you had the best circumstances to play.

And then when they started to play with their national team, they started to realize all the ways in which they were deprived of those best circumstances.

So they were forced to travel by bus when

men's team would have obviously been flown to a game.

They weren't given enough time to prepare before matches.

And then I think more troublingly and more creepily, the coach of the team just was an authoritarian figure who treated the players with incredible condescension.

He would insist that they would keep their rooms unlocked until midnight so that other managers could come in and check on them.

He would insist on checking their bags for some reason when they went out of the training camp to see what they might have purchased.

He wanted to know when they went for walks and with whom.

These are just terrible working conditions.

It's hard not to see the misogyny at play there.

And it was at play when they won.

The head of the Spanish Federation kissed the players on the lips in a way that was just cringeworthy and gross to look at.

Over and over again.

It was so weird.

The interesting thing is Megan Rapino, in some ways, created the rebellion against this.

Like, it's just a conflicted moment.

On the one hand, you look at this and say, you go like for resisting this.

On the other hand.

Teams are better than we are.

So I don't know how you land feeling about these teams.

Yeah, I'm eager to hear what Megan Rapino has to say about that.

And I would think from the outside, it's hard not to view this as an achievement, that her example clearly has empowered women, like the women on Spain, to actually go on strike.

Yeah.

That she set the template for this, which is that.

you triumph on the pitch while battling your employer over workplace conditions and in on feminist grounds.

And that's what, that's what she did.

And she did that and she succeeded.

She succeeded in winning equal pay.

And she also succeeded by providing an example that other countries could latch onto.

Yeah, I can't tell if

it's a burden we put on women that they're somehow not supposed to be quite as competitive because they're supposed to root for the sisterhood.

So you can't exactly root against Spain.

I mean, I was conflicted about that watching the team because there were moments when you saw teammates from opposite teams kind of hug and congratulate each other in ways that were quite beautiful.

Yeah, but I also look at the ways in which so much of the coverage of this U.S.

team remains coded and condescending.

That when there is no sisterhood, when Carly Lloyd accuses the U.S.

national team, the players that she played with four years ago, of celebrating and dancing and not taking this seriously, and when Fox, which is the network that normally would be rooting for the national team, comes down so hard on them for their politics.

So I think it would be unreasonable to expect them to rise above sisterhood or to transcend feminism when so many questions of misogyny are staring them at the face.

Yeah, and you think Megan Rapino probably will have some reaction to the persistence of this coded language and the ways that we talk about the women's team versus the men's.

Yeah, I'm guessing she'll have a pretty strong reaction to that.

All right, let's listen.

This is Frank's interview with Megan Rapino.

Well, so can you help explain for those who are not you why Spain is such an exceptional team?

Oh, man.

You know, so many of these players play together all of the time.

Most of them play in Spain, but most of them play for Barcelona.

And so they play the same style all of the time.

And they have the same

exact ideas on what

we should be doing and how the game should be played and how individually the game should be played.

So there's that.

They have, you know, sort of the benefit of all kind of playing in the same place or a lot of them.

And then there's like a deep philosophy.

Like not every country I don't think has this.

There's really a few like Japan for sure has this.

Brazil has this.

You know, Spain is definitely showing that they have it.

But it's like a, it's like the way all of the culture would play soccer if all of the culture was good enough to play soccer.

Like, you know, if everyone in Spain could be on the national team and have that sort of talent, they would all play like that.

Like it's just, it's just sort of like ingrained in them that way.

Is that something missing from U.S.

soccer?

In order to go to our next phase, do we need to have that kind of coherent identity?

No, I don't necessarily think so.

I don't think it's something that you can just like get either.

I mean, I think like, yeah, it would be very difficult to sort of,

A, we would have to agree on what kind of style that that would be, and we would probably never get past that

point of trying to agree on what it should be.

It's too varied.

It's too different.

I mean, I think, you know, even some of the most successful teams, other places don't always have that sort of like deeply recognizable, like, this is the way that Spain, you know, Spain is going to pass the ball as many times as possible.

And, you know, usually, you know, a lot of times they're not winning by multiple goals.

They play a much more sort of methodical type game.

And then I think that sort of game, I mean, from a young age, it takes a technical level of being able to

pass like that and to be able to understand space like that.

So it's like that's how they're learning to play, you know, from the time that they're in school all the way up to their academy teams and obviously

into the first team.

And, you know, I think you've seen like with the investment that's been made in them just over the last five or six years, you could tell that the sort of idea was already there and the understanding and the tactics were already there.

And then they just needed to be able to,

you know, be supported and have the resources they need.

Before moving on from this game, one of the cringiest moments I think I've ever watched in all of sports was just watching the head of the Spanish Federation kiss players on the mouth and kiss them on the cheek.

And it just, for me,

I started to think about all the things that the Spanish team has gone through where, you know, not having the plane flights arriving late, the way in which Vilda, the coach, would just condescendingly micromanage them.

And I started to think back to all of the ways in which U.S.

women's soccer has lived through versions of this so many times before.

When you watch that, did you think back to like the 1990s and the 2000s and all that U.S.

soccer has, I think, somewhat managed to put in its past, but not entirely?

Yeah, I think it just made me think also just like

how much

we are required to endure to just be in places sometimes.

Like just to think how much that Spanish team had to shoulder.

It's just,

to me that signals like there is such a deep level of misogyny and sexism

in that

federation and in that person, that man.

I mean even there was photos of him like I think it was at the final whistle just like grabbing his crotch and

I don't know a display of masculinity about a display of beautiful femininity.

Like what kind of upside down world are we in right now?

Along these lines, in terms of the unfairness, is the way in which your team is constantly forced to fight political battles, even when you're not picking them.

I mean, I'm thinking now about what Donald Trump put out after you guys were knocked out of the tournament.

He said, the shocking and totally unexpected loss by the U.S.

women's soccer team to Sweden is fully emblematic of what is happening to our once great nation under crooked Joe Biden.

Does Does that mean that he's claiming credit for your victory there?

Because you didn't win under Biden, but you did win under Trump.

But wokeness equals failure.

I mean, it's really, it's kind of hard to parse what he's saying there.

I don't know.

It always is.

It always is because what he's saying is fake.

It's a compilation.

of

hit words and hot-button words that don't actually make any sort of sense or square with reality at all.

And I think it's it's Trump certainly, and he's the sort of worst and biggest of all of that kind of ecosystem.

But I think just in general, the way that our team was was spoken about over the course of the tournament,

it's just like it was fake and it didn't make sense.

It's especially having the experience of 2019

where we were ultra confident, ultra swaggy,

you know, and won everything.

And we were too confident and too arrogant and too swaggy.

And even though we won, we did it in bad taste because we thought we were going to win so much.

And now this time,

we aren't swaggy enough.

We aren't confident enough.

And we don't have the right quote unquote mentality.

And so we lost and now it's because we aren't all of those things and we didn't do all of those things.

And all of it is somehow because

we have used our platform to not only just fight for ourselves.

It's not just things that we're like going outside and being like, oh, we have to, you know, fight for all of these things for equality.

Like by necessity, we had to because it was happening to us because we were being discriminated against.

And now it's like we've lost because of that.

It's just, it's just so disingenuous.

There's no way for us to win and there's no way for us to lose.

What I found so disheartening was just watching the Fox coverage because Fox both is making a ton of money off of the U.S.

women's team, but then also recycling a lot of the tropes that you're describing.

To have Alexi Lawless call the team unlikable or to have Carly Carly Lloyd go on about the celebration and dancing.

I mean, you don't have to have a PhD in cultural studies to see exactly what they're implying there.

It's just very disheartening to see these tropes being injected into the culture by the very network that's supposed to be celebrating and broadcasting the game.

Yeah, it was really disappointing, I think, and just and disingenuous also.

I think that I'm like, it was almost like the speed

with which those comments got into the atmosphere, it was like those just felt like they had just been in the cannon.

Everybody has been waiting, sort of on the right.

And everybody who was using this like hateful language and these tropes and these very, you know, just not smart, thought-out, hateful takes.

They have just been waiting since,

I mean, what, 2016, 2019, 2020?

Like,

they've kind of just been waiting for the opportunity to, like,

let this, for this team to stumble or for this team to not be perfect, which when we are perfect, then we are accused of thinking that we're perfect.

So it's like, okay, whatever.

If you can't win, you can't lose.

And just the speed with which all of that hateful language just came spewing out, like it was just in the cannon ready.

I think the right wing wants this to be true and wants women to believe that you can't have it all or you can't fight for things and be excellent.

You can't ask for what you deserve and, you know, be successful and all those things.

But the reality is that it is.

We are doing that.

Beyonce is doing that.

Taylor Swift is doing that.

Like Coco Goff is doing that.

The women's national team is doing that.

You can't tell me that

we can't fight for equality and still be great on the field.

We are still great on the field and we're fighting for equality and it's better for our bottom line and the sport's growing.

I mean, it's maybe a mistake sometimes to cordon

off our criticisms to just the right when they are so much more maybe mainstream than it sometimes seems.

No, I think that that's right.

I think...

One thing that America does really well is backlash and culturally pervasive backlash.

And sometimes it's a little bit more obvious than others but i think there's a huge backlash against women happening right now i think we see that with roe v wade we're seeing that with the trans argument and sports not allowing trans people to play sports or pretending like we're talking about women at the same time that we're essentially trying to strip women of all rights that we've gained and it's like yeah does lexi know exactly what he's saying i i don't know i don't think it's that difficult to figure out and if i am saying stuff that also, you know, anchors on Fox News are saying, like, I would be worried about the cosine.

I would look a little bit deeper into the cosine, but maybe he is.

And that's what he thinks.

But I think that there's a deep backlash against women right now and against the progress that women are making and the space that women are taking up and the way women's sports is using the platform that they have that is growing, that is just far different from men's sports.

We're We're not used to seeing excellence coupled with like a deep commitment to progress in the way that women's sports is.

Well, how do you personally feel?

I mean, it seems like the U.S.

women's team helped establish, in many ways, the template that we now see being picked up by other teams so that when the Spanish players go on strike or the Colombian players begin to complain about the misogynistic treatment that they've received, it feels like one of the most inspiring aspects of the U.S.

story, but also just what's happened around the world, is that you see resistance, you see protest, you see players taking action against the workplace conditions that they've been subjected to.

And I don't know if as you look back at your career and how things have changed, what role you see the U.S.

women playing in this global story?

I mean, I think what I've realized for a long time is that we're playing two games at the same time.

One, we're playing all against each other, and that's the competition part.

And, you know, federations are obviously competing against each other and you want to win the game.

And then the other one, we're all playing together to win.

equality and progress and what we deserve and to try to achieve the right to just go out and play the other game, which is just on the field.

And I think for me,

like the women's national team places like,

you can't parse it out from the success of

the women's game like globally at the club level and at the international level.

So I think sometimes I feel like even during the tournament, we would be getting these questions because there was a lot more parody in the tournament.

And obviously there's a new champion and there's, you you know different teams in the knockout rounds and there was you know all these sort of cinderella stories and it's amazing and almost the implication of like are you guys kind of like oh damn like we

we all this progress and now there's progress and it's like that maybe is confusing for people who don't really want equality for those of us who actually do want equality and do want things to be better like we are still winning.

I think that's like the difference.

Like we want these other teams to

be good and to get what they deserve and to be paid equally and to have the resources that they deserve and to not be subjected to misogyny and racism and sexism and all of that.

Like

if that comes at the expense of our own dominance, yeah, like we want that.

And maybe that's a novel concept for some people, but it's not for us.

And I think we've understood for a long time that being one of the best teams and being one of the teams that have

been

invested in the most, not enough, and been resourced

the best, still not enough, that like that is our responsibility to continue to like push the game forward.

Before I let you go, because I'm cruel, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Sweden game.

Because it felt like from afar that after this tournament where the U.S.

had struggled to kind of click, that suddenly in that game, you guys started to play.

And it was the first time in the tournament where I thought, oh, maybe they can go all the way.

Is that how it felt to you as you watched and played?

I think it felt a lot more, yeah, a lot more fluid.

I think we set up a lot more to

our strengths and to what we were going to be good at and what was going to make us hard to beat.

I think we played to the, you know, as good as as we could and we tried as hard as we could.

And sometimes you just, you know, you lose.

And I think that's some people looking at it like, oh, you know, your whole legacy is messed up because you lost or the team isn't good enough or this, that.

When it's like, no, I mean, that we're like.

We're still willing to be in the arena no matter what.

Like, that's the brave part of constantly being like, yeah, you know, we have the expectation to win all the time.

And if you win, it's kind of a pat on the back.

And if you lose, it's a catastrophe.

But But it's like you just, you go out there and try and you do your best.

And there's nothing to be, you know, embarrassed or ashamed or feel anything other than proud that we did the best that we could.

Is that the way you've always thought about winning or losing?

Or is that something that you learn over the course of a career?

I think I've always felt that way about winning and losing.

I think growing up.

playing on teams where we were not the best team.

I'm from kind of a small area and both my twin sister and I had to travel to play and we were kind of like on these you know sort of like ragtag teams put together so I lost a lot I lost a lot growing up I mean I lost a lot even just in my sister's you know

front yard 1v1 battles but I always felt you know and I think I think having experienced my very first World Cup of making it to a final and losing

It was like, I mean, you tried your best.

Like,

it's hard to win everything.

I mean, I've been very fortunate to win a lot and to win in the biggest moments and to have some of the most amazing wins and the most amazing experiences.

But like, that's part of life to me.

And that's part of the beautiful part of sport to me is that like you don't get to control all of that all the time.

Talk about penalty kicks because I can't imagine stepping up and taking one.

If, you know, the cliche about it being the cruelest way to settle a game feels so, so true.

But what went through your mind when you stepped up to take that kick against Sweden?

I'm going to score.

That's what always goes.

It's like, I'm going to score, but I could miss it.

I think that's honestly something that has made me so successful in penalty kicks for so long is the

acceptance and the realization that like I will miss them.

I miss them in training regularly.

I've been lucky not to miss a lot in games, in actual competition, but like eventually eventually that can happen.

I was definitely hoping to skate through the rest of my career without missing one, certainly in a World Cup and in a biggest moment.

But I think that's like, I think there's just something so like simply

real about it.

And it's just like, this is such life that like.

you know, I would take it again.

I love taking them.

I would take them all the time.

I would take that one again.

I would pick me to take them.

I would pick all my teammates to take, like, I think that's just part of it is the, you know, the willingness to to step up and actually take one I think is is really brave because it's a really pressure-filled moment and it's a cruel moment and you know sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn't and I think for a long time I have thought about missing one in a really big moment and just saying I mean it's like what are you gonna do the only other thing you could do is to not take one to guard yourself against missing one which you know I'm not gonna do that I would rather step up and and be in that moment and I think that's something that made the criticism after that loss like particularly

fake and disingenuous and absurd and like outrageous to me was like, you're going to bash on me for getting out there and trying my best and for these players getting out there and like trying their best.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't.

Now that your international career has come to a close, And U.S.

soccer is at this place where it's achieved incredible things, but clearly the level of global competition has been raised.

The question is, where does U.S.

soccer go from here?

Do we resign ourselves to the fact that it's just going to be a more competitive world than it's been in the past?

I think that's part of it.

That, yeah,

it is

incredibly competitive and it's getting more competitive and we're still right there in the mix.

It's almost like people see the sort of the rest of the world, quote unquote, catching up as somehow we're racing backwards.

And that is not the case at all.

I think it is worth at least like a deep dive look at what our structure is,

not just from the senior national team, but from the youth national teams as well.

We haven't done that well in the youth tournaments.

We certainly haven't been winning them.

And you look at Spain winning U17 World Cup, winning U20 World Cup, and then winning the senior World Cup.

Like that's not no coincidence.

Those players are now going to be, when they step into the senior national team it's almost as if they have already played for the team so I think a more consistent style and a more consistent philosophy from

the younger teams all the way up to the senior teams is necessary it's a lot more difficult in America because we don't have the academy system that they have in Europe they're honestly much better set up for

a more holistic approach from the younger teams to

the senior teams.

It's going to be more difficult here.

And I think the continuing growth of our league needs to grow a lot.

I think that leagues in other parts of the world are

more similar to the international game at the highest level than our league is.

What are you going to miss most about being in a World Cup?

Oh, man.

Just the

buzz around it.

It's like this moment in time that is just, you know,

so special walking into these stadiums, the kind of feeling that like on any given day, anything can happen.

If you catch that little piece of fire, like

it's just special.

I mean, we caught it in 2019 a really special way.

And just that feeling of kind of like floating, but you're fully present as well.

Obviously the fanfare and, you know, being able to play in huge stadiums and, you know, scoring goals in those big moments.

And I think just being a part of the sort of like change that comes with women's sports is really special about that and i think you know being able to represent your country i think a lot of time that gets lost you know when people talk about me in particular like oh you guys don't sing the anthem you don't do this

you don't love america but it's like we actually we do love america it's just more in like a james baldwin kind of way not in like a you know bald eagle on your shoulder kind of way but you know the fact that gay people can look out on the field and black people can look out on the field and you know really see themselves in us our team dynamic and makeup has changed a lot over the years and i think that that's something that we're really proud of and so to be able to represent america in that way i think has been incredibly meaningful for me i just look back i feel so lucky and so

grateful to have

had the career and been able to be a part of it for as long as I have.

It'll be something that I like miss forever.

I don't think I'll ever not want to play in the biggest games and be a be a part of that.

And

I'll be the biggest fan of the players moving forward.

I can't wait to watch them play.

I'll definitely be at the next World Cup.

I'll be a fan at the next World Cup for sure.

Amazing.

Thanks, Megan.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Kevin Townsend.

It was engineered by Rob Smirciak.

The executive producer of Atlantic Audio is Claudina Bade, and our managing editor is Andrea Valdez.

And of course, thank you to Frank Floor.

I'm Hannah Rosen, and I'll talk to you soon.