Megan Rapinoe, the soccer star who has been a fixture of the dominant U.S. ladies’s nationwide staff and one of the vital politically outspoken American athletes, mentioned Saturday that she deliberate to retire on the finish of the yr, making this upcoming World Cup her final.

Rapinoe, 38, has performed for the U.S. ladies’s nationwide staff since 2006 and the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand scheduled to start later this month can be her fourth.

“I could have just never imagined where this beautiful game would have taken me,” Rapinoe informed reporters throughout an surprising look at a news convention forward of a U.S. sport in opposition to Wales in San Jose, Calif., scheduled for Sunday.

“I feel so honored to have represented this country, this federation for so many years,” she mentioned. “It’s truly been the greatest thing I’ve ever done.”

Rapinoe, who has had quite a few accidents all through her profession, has been coping with an ankle damage main as much as the National Women’s Soccer League season and missed two nationwide staff friendlies in opposition to Ireland in April with a calf damage.

Rapinoe made perhaps her biggest mark in 2019, when she received the Ballon d’Or as soccer’s ladies’s participant of the yr and earned the Golden Boot as the highest scorer and the Golden Ball as the highest participant of the World Cup, with six targets.

She was outspoken on quite a few points, together with L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and was a frequent antagonist of former President Donald J. Trump. Her management of the staff additionally got here at a time when it was fighting with its national federation for pay fairness, confronting variations between the economics of the lads’s and girls’s variations of the game.

Rapinoe additionally performed in two ladies’s skilled leagues within the United States, starting within the Women’s Professional League, which folded in 2011, and within the N.W.S.L. She mentioned she would retire from the N.W.S.L. after this season.

Alex Morgan, one other prime star for the U.S. staff, mentioned Rapinoe texted the staff’s group chat on Saturday morning to announce her determination. “Well,” Morgan mentioned, “now we have to go win the whole damn thing.”