Megan Rapinoe started her lengthy goodbye with the equal of a homecoming.

In the last decade and a half since she turned an expert soccer participant, Rapinoe’s profession has taken her to soccer golf equipment on two continents, to Olympic Games on three and, quickly, to a fourth World Cup. On Sunday, a day after she stunned her workforce and her followers by publicly saying plans to retire on the finish of this 12 months, Rapinoe discovered herself settling right into a seat on the U.S. girls’s nationwide workforce bench a pair hundred miles from her hometown.

Rapinoe, 38, grew up in Redding, Calif., about 250 miles north of the location of Sunday’s sport, PayPal Park in San Jose. She estimated that about 40 of her relations and associates had made the journey south to see the United States beat Wales, 2-0, in its last sport on American soil forward of the Women’s World Cup that begins later this month in Australia and New Zealand.

“This is the closest that I’ll ever get to play to Redding in my career,” Rapinoe had stated on Saturday. “It does feel very special. It feels perfect.”

During the news convention through which she introduced her retirement plans on Saturday, Rapinoe had stated that she was at peace with the choice to step away from soccer. Now, she was simply having fun with the prospect to offer a correct goodbye to the game that made her a global star, in addition to a spokeswoman for equal rights, equal pay and social justice points near her coronary heart.

Rapinoe has performed for the nationwide workforce since 2006. A 3-time Olympian and two-time World Cup champion, she has scored 63 objectives for the United States and is one in all seven gamers to have amassed greater than 50 objectives and 50 assists in her U.S. nationwide workforce profession.

Her function is completely different nowadays, having advanced from a lineup fixture to a late-game substitute. She remains to be valued by her coach, Vlatko Andonovski, although; he included her on his World Cup roster as a result of he values her management, expertise and talent to form huge moments.

Whenever and nevertheless she performs going ahead, she stays a crowd favourite. One fan, Corina Burns, who wore a No. 15 T-shirt with the title “Rapinoe” on the again, stated she drove from Southern California along with her three daughters to attend Sunday’s sport. It wasn’t the household’s first journey to see the nationwide workforce play: They had been in France 4 years in the past when Rapinoe was one of many Americans’ most beneficial gamers of their victory on the 2019 World Cup.

“We saw her play and fell in love with her,” Burns stated.

That World Cup stays, for now, Rapinoe’s crowning achievement. She gained each the Golden Boot because the event’s high scorer and the Golden Ball as its excellent participant. It can be when she cemented her standing as a popular culture icon: She scored six objectives within the competitors at the same time as she publicly battled with President Donald J. Trump.

She stays an outspoken voice, however she is a unique participant nowadays. Rapinoe has been hampered by accidents for months, with an ankle damage retaining her out of the beginning of the National Women’s Soccer League season and a calf damage retaining her out of two nationwide workforce matches towards Ireland in April.

In her absence, newer faces — Sophia Smith, Trinity Rodman, Alyssa Thompson — have begun to put declare to the ahead place the place Rapinoe was as soon as a transparent selection. That new era, the one that can occupy the house vacated by Rapinoe, was on show once more towards Wales.

In the 76th minute on Sunday, Rodman, 21, broke by means of in a scoreless sport by scoring simply off a cross from Smith, 22. Rodman struck once more within the 88th minute, powering a shot from 20 yards previous the fingers of Wales goalkeeper Olivia Clark. Rodman turned the youngest American participant to attain two objectives in a global match.

Rapinoe nonetheless has a lot to supply, too. Andonovski has made no secret of how a lot he values the knowledge and institutional information she brings to a workforce that now options gamers just like the 18-year-old Thompson, who’s contemporary out of highschool; Savannah DeMelo, 25, who obtained her first cap on Sunday; and the dozen different new faces headed to their first World Cup.

That they struggled, till Rodman scored twice off the bench, to interrupt down a resolute Wales workforce that didn’t qualify for the World Cup was maybe a hopeful signal that Rapinoe would possibly nonetheless have an essential function to play earlier than she walks away from the workforce for good.

Her probability by no means arrived on Sunday: Rapinoe didn’t heat up and Andonovski by no means known as for her to come back on. It was one other signal that though Rapinoe stated her time is nearly up, the instances might have already modified.