Megan Rapinoe will end a long and controversial USWNT career by returning to Chicago today… where she first took the knee and where everything began to snowball

Almost no one noticed the first time Megan Rapinoe sat down and then took a stand.

It was protest on a whim: unplanned and virtually unseen. On September 2, 2016, the USWNT star was in the crowd watching women’s basketball: Seattle Storm on Chicago Sky.

When the arena rose for the national anthem, Rapinoe stood still. She later called it “a knee-jerk reaction” born of “outrage” and “a desire to show solidarity” with NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who a day earlier began kneeling in protest against police brutality and racial injustice.

Sue Bird then played for the Storm. She is now Rapinoe’s partner and that evening she saw the footballer. She realized its significance. But besides that? Barely a wrinkle.

It took a few more days before the controversy began to increase. On September 4, Rapinoe’s Seattle Reign played the Chicago Red Stars. She started as a substitute, and this time she became America’s first white athlete to drop to one knee.

“I assumed I would be little more than an annoyance,” Rapinoe later admitted. “In the days that followed… I realized I had called it wrong.”

It didn’t take long for one of the USWNT’s most successful players to become one of the most polarizing and important figures in the sport. “Hate mail poured into my agent’s office. People were calling for me to be fired from the team. My social media feeds were full of abuse,” she recalls.

Since those three days in Chicago, Rapinoe, now 38, has been accused of bullying teammates and disrespecting her country. She made a small splash at US Soccer, but has left an indelible mark on her sport and her colleagues. She boiled the blood of one former president and earned the Medal of Freedom of another.

“A backbone of this team,” Alex Morgan called her. “Someone who stands up for (something) when it’s not always a popular opinion… he hasn’t had an easy time in the national team, especially in the last five years.”

This week, Rapinoe returns for another September Sunday in Chicago. To face South Africa, to make one last appearance for the United States. To wave goodbye at the place where something changed and everything started to snowball.

In September 2016, Rapinoe had already won the World Cup (2015) and won Olympic gold (2012). She had been a US international for ten years and had already built a lasting legacy. For a while, sports had been just one part of her story; Rapinoe was known to have spoken out and fought to combat homophobia and secure equal pay.

But dropping to one knee put her in the line of fire and flirting with disgrace.

The 38-year-old’s first protest from the bench is often lost in the mist of what followed. One ex-Reign teammate, who played that day, couldn’t remember Chicago being where it all started.

Even then, not everyone cared. Some match reports focus only on the Red Stars’ recovery from 2-0 to a 2-2 draw.

But many people noticed, including the owner of Washington Spirit – Seattle’s next opponents. A few days later, to prevent the game from being “hijacked,” the team took the “extraordinary step” of playing the Star Spangled Banner while the teams were in the locker room – “rather than subject our fans and friends to disrespect that we feel that way’ would represent an act.’ Rapinoe’s answer? ‘F****** unbelievable’.

Unfortunately, the controversy only deepened when she took her protest to the international stage. Before the USWNT faced Thailand the following week, Rapinoe knelt during the national anthem for the first time in her country’s colors.

US Soccer released a statement saying: “As part of the privilege of representing your country, we expect our players and coaches to honor our flag as the national anthem is played.”

Supporters also expressed their feelings. During the USA’s next game, after she knelt again, Rapinoe was booed. Then Captain Carli Lloyd admitted that Rapinoe’s protests were becoming a distraction. Coach Jill Ellis soon left her out completely, and in 2017, US Soccer formally banned national team players from kneeling during the national anthem.

“I didn’t expect anything like this scale of outrage,” Rapinoe later admitted. ‘When I have campaigned for LGBTQ rights or equal pay, I have always been warmly received… There is a certain kind of stunned outrage that white people reserve for other white people who they view as a ‘betrayal’ of their race, and that week I felt the full force of it.”

Neither her exile nor US Soccer’s policies lasted. But the dye was poured. For the next seven years, Rapinoe lived at the center of a cultural tug-of-war. “I feel like I’m a walking protest,” as she once put it.

Few athletes, in any sport, straddle such deep divides. It’s a story that can be told through two presidents and two teammates.

Hope Solo once claimed that she saw Megan Rapinoe “almost bullying players into kneeling because she really wants to stand up for something in her particular way.”

But for Beverly Yanez, who played in Chicago that day, the fun, laughter and dancing they shared still lingers. “If you needed anything you could call her and she would pick you up and take care of you,” she told Mail Sport.

In 2019, Rapinoe led the US to a second straight World Cup victory but became embroiled in a war of words with Donald Trump.

At this year’s tournament, as the anthem once again became a lightning rod for frustration at home, Rapinoe’s final act was to miss a penalty. And then smile.

“Many of our players were openly hostile to America – no other country behaved in this manner, or even close to it,” Trump wrote. “WAKENESS EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, USA is going to hell!!!!’

Just a year earlier, Rapinoe had become the first football player to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “Megan is a champion of the essential American truth that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect,” Joe Biden said. On Sunday, back in Chicago, it’s time for the walking protest to say goodbye.