Top facts about Megan Rapinoe

 plays for and captains

in the National Women's Soccer League, as a midfielder and winger. In fact, Rapinoe is a midfielder who can also play as a winger or in the attacking midfield position.

Rapinoe is known for her fancy footwork and agile style of play, a skillset that has led the US to consecutive world cup victories. She is the first woman to start three back-to-back World Cup finals.

During the last year's games, Rapinoe has gotten a lot of attention both on and off the pitch for her high-tempo plays and outspoken nature.

The winger isn't just an influence on the pitch. Other than her crafty style of play, Rapinoe is known for her liberal character and activities out of the pitch like being outspoken on social equity issues.

She has called for the United States women's team to be paid the same as their male counterparts. She and the US squad are currently suing their federation over gender discrimination.

It's a message that captured the imagination of fans at the World Cup in France as they could be heard chanting "Equal pay!

The first

fact about Megan Rapinoe

is that she is an openly gay female footballer. She came out in 2012 and has been an advocate of raising gender equality in sports ever since.

The followings are some facts about Megan Rapinoe, the 2019 Soccer Shocker:

The 35-year-old forward has become an inspiration with her conscious endeavors to be a role model for women all over the world.

Megan Rapinoe biography

• Birth Name:

  Megan Ana Rapinoe

• Born:

  July 5, 1985

• Age:

  35

• College:

  University of Portland

• Club:

  Reign FC

• Girlfriend:

  Sue Bird

• Height:

  5 ft 6 in (1.68m)

• Weight:

  60 kg

Megan Anna Rapinoe is born on July 5, 1985, in Redding, California, USA.

Rapinoe’s parents

are Denise and Jim. Denise is a server at a popular restaurant in her hometown of Redding, CA and Jim owns a construction company.

Rapinoe played for the US in their youth team and made her full senior international debut for the US women soccer team in 2006. Rapione was part of the US team that won the gold at the London Olympics 2012 and FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2015.

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Rapinoe’s cross to Abby Wambach in the 122nd minute of the 2011 quarterfinal game against Brazil, which resulted in an equalizer goal, was awarded ESPN's 2011 ESPY Award for Best Play of the Year.

In the 2019 women's world cup, she scored the opening goal in the 2-0 match. Later, she won the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball. Rapinoe was the absolute star of the 2019 World Cup for the

.

About

Megan Rapinoe’s childhood

, it has been reported that she grew up in Redding with her parents and five siblings, including her fraternal twin Rachael Rapinoe. Rapinoe’s parents raised seven children together, not all their own!

Megan was four years old when she kicked her first soccer ball. Rapinoe’s parents encouraged her love for the game, but taught her that winning is secondary to the way she lived her personal life.

As an important fact about Megan Rapinoe, she published a book entitled ‘One Life,’ in which, she embarked on a thoughtful discussion of social justice and politics.

In her book, Rapinoe reflects on the choices she has made, her victories, and her failures, and embarks on a candid discussion of her personal journey into social justice.

Megan Rapinoe brother

After leading the United States to the 2019 Women's World Cup title on July 7, 2019, Megan Rapinoe gave her brother Brian a birthday shout-out on national TV.

When she finished up her interview, she had one final message. She wished happy birthday to Brian.

"Just one thing: Happy birthday, Brian. I love you so much," Rapinoe said as she blew a kiss to the camera.

Brian is Rapinoe's older brother who was not able to make the trip to France because he was not allowed to leave the country as part of San Diego's Male Community Reentry Program - a program that allows inmates to finish the final year of their sentence outside of prison.

As detailed in a recent feature story from ESPN, Brian has spent most of his adult life in prison. He was either incarcerated or unable to leave the country for all three of Megan's World Cup trips.

"I was her hero, but now - there's no question - she is mine," Brian said.

Another

fact about Megan Rapinoe

is that her brother has always been her idol. "I worshipped him," Megan once said. "He played left wing, so I played left wing. He wore No. 7; I wore No. 7. He got a bowl cut, so I did too."

Brian, 38, has served 16 years in prison for various offenses. He told reporters that he began using drugs at 12 and eventually became addicted to heroin. According to various reports, he's now been clean for about two years and hoping to turn his life around.

The rehab program he's in allows an inmate to serve the final 12 months of a sentence taking classes or working a job outside of prison.

Megan Rapinoe love story

Among interesting facts about Megan Rapinoe is her dating history. The Olympic gold medalist,

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Megan Rapinoe, announced to the world that she’s gay shortly before the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Megan had been out to her family and team members for years, but decided to come out publicly after a yearlong thought process because concealing a central part of her identity seemed “weird” and “not authentic,” She said in her interview, “being true to yourself is a beautiful thing.”

She was in a relationship with an Australian soccer player, Sarah Walsh in 2009. Rapinoe brought her home to visit her family in Northern California in 2012 Christmas but they ended their relationship in 2013.

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Rapinoe was rumored to be dating Sera Cahoone, a sub pop recording artist. They announced their engagement in August 2015 but called off the engagement in 2016.

“This little lady is getting married,” Megan wrote on Instagram alongside a picture of them embracing.

Cahoone stepped into the public eye when she got engaged to the soccer star Megan Rapinoe, but irrespective of their split two years later, Sera continued to grow as a musician.

In 2016, Rapinoe began dating Seattle storm soccer player, Sue Bird. She and her Girlfriend are a true ‘Power Couple’.

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Her partner is a WNBA star.

She's also captain of Seattle's Reign FC, while Bird, 40, has been with the WNBA's Seattle Storm since 2002. She's won three championships with the basketball team and between the two of them, they have five Olympic gold medals. Impressive doesn't even begin to describe it!

Both have plenty of accolades to go around. As co-captain of soccer's US Women's National Team, Rapinoe, 35, and her team just won the FIFA Women's World Cup.

Although both athletes play for and lived in Seattle, they hadn't met until briefly seeing each other at a press event for the 2016 Summer Olympics, they shared in an interview at the ESPNW Women and Sports Summit.

Rapinoe ended up attending a few of Bird's basketball games in Rio, and they had "kind of the same agent," so they would all hang out during their off time. Bird jokingly said that her partner "slid into my DMs," though fitting for both, the messages had a purpose.

Rapinoe reached out to Bird to commend her for the recent #BlackLivesMatter protest her team had taken part in. DMs quickly led to texting, and once they were both back in Seattle, the rest was history!

But aside from their athletic prowess, both have a long history of being socially active, speaking up on the topics of equal pay for female athletes, LGBTQ rights, racism, and police brutality.

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Megan Rapinoe career

Rapinoe spent most of her youth playing with teams coached by her father until high school. Instead of playing soccer at Foothill High School, Rapinoe played for the Elk Grove Pride club team, located south of Sacramento.

Rapinoe’s professional career

began at Elk Grove Pride and the University of Portland. During their college freshmen, Rapinoe and Rachael won the NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Championship.

She then played with the Chicago Red Stars from 2009 to 2010. In 2011, she competed for the Philadelphia Independence, magicJack and Sydney Football Club (FC). She then played for the Seattle Sounders Women, Olympique Lyon, and Seattle Reign FC.

Regarding Rapinoe’s international career, it should be mentioned that Rapinoe played for the United States under-16 national soccer team in 2002 and traveled with the team to France and Houston, Texas.

Rapinoe made her debut for the senior team on July 23, 2006, during a friendly match against Ireland.

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She trained with the United States women's national soccer team for the first time during the team's 2006 Residency Training Camp in Carson, California.

In 2010, Rapinoe started eight of the ten games she played and scored four goals with two assists.

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The United States' 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup was her third World Cup appearance.

Megan Rapinoe taking a knee

Rapinoe tends to be more high-profile when it comes to championing various issues. One of the most important

facts about Megan Rapinoe

is that in 2016, she was one of the first white, female athletes to take Colin Kaepernick's lead by kneeling during the National Anthem.

She acknowledged that “It doesn’t feel good really for anyone … but that’s what it takes. Progress is hard.”

Megan Rapinoe no longer kneels during the national anthem like she previously did due to a U.S. Soccer rule put in place, but that doesn't mean she fully participates in the pre-game tradition.

She now stands alongside her teammates as the song plays, refusing to sing along or, as is tradition, cover her heart with her hand. Rapinoe told reporters that the anthem has become a "somber moment" for her and described her new approach to it as a "peaceful protest."

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The silent observance of the anthem is nothing new, but has resurfaced in the media after comments from both Rapinoe and President Donald Trump reignited the anthem-protest flames stemming back to former San Franciso 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem of Sept. 1, 2016, preseason NFL game although she was largely criticized for not singing U.S. national anthem during World Cup.

Megan Rapinoe wasn't the only one that felt the backlash due to her kneeling during the national anthem. Her mother said to reporters that she felt the heat as well in her conservative county, which strongly disapproved of her famous daughter's gesture.

People reportedly called her home constantly. Some even confronted her at the restaurant where she worked for three decades, which had pictures of her daughter hanging on the walls until the restaurant took them down.

Megan Rapinoe stats

• Ballon d'Or Féminin 2019

• The Best FIFA Women's Player 2019

• Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year 2019

• Goal 50 2019

• Glamour Award for The Champion 2019

• FIFA FIFPro Women's World XI 2020, 2019

• Best NWSL Player ESPY Award 2018

• Shorty Award for Best in Sports 2020

Megan Rapinoe, the co-captain on the US women’s national soccer team, was recognized as the biggest star in the sports world last year.

She won the Golden Boot and Golden Ball awards, scored her 50th career international goal, the US record, and took home the World Cup trophy, all on her way to being named FIFA’s best women’s player for 2019.

Among noticeable facts about Megan Rapinoe is that she won Ballon d'Or as World's Best Player. She beat England and Lyon defender Lucy Bronze to the award, while US teammate

finished third.

At age 34, Rapinoe was the oldest woman to score in a World Cup final and was named Player of the Match. She was awarded the Golden Boot as the top scorer in the tournament with six goals, having played fewer minutes than her teammate Alex Morgan and England's Ellen White, who also recorded six goals. Rapinoe also earned the Golden Ball award as the best player at the tournament.

While Rapinoe’s place as a US women soccer superstar is assured – she’s been described as her generation’s Muhammad Ali – she is always careful to attribute her success to the team.

“This group … is just so badass,” said Rapinoe during last week’s parade. “There is nothing that can faze this group. We’re chilling. We’ve got tea-sipping. We’ve got celebrations.

We’ve got pink hair and purple hair. We’ve got tattoos and dreadlocks. We’ve got white girls and black girls and everything in between. Straight girls and gay girls,” she once said.

Megan

Rapinoe and Trump

Before the 2019 World cup final, President Donald Trump unleashed a tweetstorm targeted at Rapinoe, captain of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, after a video surfaced of the athlete saying she’s not going to the White House if the team wins the championship.

Rapinoe said in a video clip shared on social media, "I'm not going to the f---ing White House."

"I am a big fan of the American Team, and Women's Soccer, but Megan should WIN first before she TALKS! Finish the job!" Trump tweeted.

Rapinoe had told prior to the 2019 World Cup that she was "a walking protest when it comes to the Trump administration" because of her beliefs. Needless to say, her dislike of Trump runs deeper than just a difference of opinion.

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Another fact about Megan Rapinoe is that when she scored the first of her two goals in their 2-1 victory over France in the quarterfinals of the Women’s World Cup, on a cunning and elusive free-kick, Megan Rapinoe ran to the corner of the field and held her arms aloft.

The gesture was not a mere celebration. It seemed to say, this is all of me. Take me for the bold, complex person that I am: big personality; social activist; champion of equal pay; national anthem protester; presidential critic; lavender-haired soccer star of ruthless and creative purpose.

Megan Rapinoe and Obama

Another noteworthy fact about Megan Rapinoe is that she is an advocate of Democrats. Obama honored the team in 2015 after their third World Cup win, but it was unclear if the reigning champions would head to the White House during the Trump administration.

In 2019, former President, Barack Obama, said that he was “proud to rep” the World Cup-winning U.S. women’s national soccer team in a photo shared on social media, showing him posing with a team jersey.

Obama thanked the players “for being such a strong inspiration for women and girls — and everybody — all across the country” in posts on Instagram and Twitter.

Megan Rapinoe social media

Regarding

Megan Rapinoe’s social media

, it’s worth mentioning that she’s just as big of a star on both Instagram and Twitter, where her 2.2M Instagram (

) and 910K+ Twitter (

) followers enjoy keeping up with the international star. Rapinoe also shares some information with her fans via her

.

Megan Rapinoe made waves off the field as a leading activist for social justice and women’s rights, filing a pay inequity suit against the US Soccer Federation, for gender discrimination.

Rapinoe criticized FIFA for the huge gap in prize money awarded at the men’s and women’s world cups. She acknowledged that closing the so-called “gender wage gap” between men and women’s soccer would entail generating more money for the women’s team, what conservative critics have argued all along.

Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird announced their engagement on Instagram and the post quickly lit up on social media, where they have huge fans.

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Megan Rapinoe net worth

The last but not least fact about Megan Rapinoe is that her passion for professional football helped her become rich in her early twenties. In 2009, Megan was announced to be the second in the 2009 WPS (Women’s Professional Soccer) Draft for what was the highest-division of women’s soccer in the US at that time.

Two years later, while she was in Germany taking part in the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup, she was transferred from Philadelphia Independence to MagicJack. To prove her star power, instead of the average salary for a female player ($25,000), the transfer cash fee for Megan was approximately $100,000. It is worth mentioning here that

Rapinoe’s salary

is presently around $150,000 per year.

However, many people believe that despite being a veteran player, Rapinoe doesn’t earn that much compared to her teammates like Alex Morgan and Julie Ertz.

It’s mainly because she doesn’t have many endorsement deals. She only has some deals with brands like Nike, Samsung, and Wildfang. Rapinoe signed a partnership with Microsoft.

It is interesting to know that Rapinoe uses mediums and sponsorship deals to raise awareness about women’s sport.

Rapinoe’s net worth

is estimated to be around $ 3.5 Million.

Megan Rapinoe tattoos

The Women’s World Cup champion has the tiny script, “Nature ran her course” written on her left bicep and her other tattoo is on her wrist and it reads, in Arabic, “Trust yourself.” She also has three triangles and an outline of California.

Megan Rapinoe is definitely the biggest star in women’s professional soccer. The fearless team captain has made a name for herself and is praised for using her popularity to speak for others.

Rapinoe is also a respected advocate and activist for equality and LGBT rights, who has achieved a lot within a short period of time.

The tattoos signify that Rapinoe, who is an openly gay advocate for equality and gender pay discrimination, will always fight for what she believes is right and be transparent about who she is. Rapinoe once said, “I’m pretty transparent in the way that I live my life.” And in the end, that is all that matters!

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