Former National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) player Megan Rapinoe said suffering an injury in the last game of her professional career was “proof” God doesn’t exist.
During the final match of her career, Rapinoe of OL Reign injured her leg in the early minutes of Saturday’s game against Gotham FC.
The former NWSL player said she was going to get the “Aaron Rodgers treatment,” a reference to the former Green Bay Packer and current New York Jet. Rapinoe added she would ask Rodgers, who also injured his Achilles tendon, what doctor performed surgery on him.
“I’m not a religious person or anything and if there was a God, this is proof that there isn’t. This is f—ed up,” Rapinoe said in a post-game interview on Saturday. “For sure, I tore my Achilles,” she said and described the moment of the injury as a “huge pop.”
“I wasn’t overly emotional about it,” Rapinoe said. “I mean, f—ing yeeted my Achilles in the sixth minute in my last game ever in the literal championship game … I guess I just rode until the wheels came right off.”
Rapinoe said she was a “normal ass regular person,” and said having to do rehab was “f—ing devastating.”
Megan Rapinoe says this about her injury and leaving the game early.
“If there was a god, this is proof there isn’t”
🎥 @NWSL pic.twitter.com/Iv6kIaYidz
— Area Sports Network (@AreaSportsNet) November 12, 2023
“You gotta find the silver lining and the dark humor, and that’s just who I am as well,” she added.
Rapinoe has famously been no stranger to expressing her opinions on and off the field. In September 2016, Rapinoe refused to stand for the national anthem and instead opted to take a knee similar to former San Francisco 49ers NFL player Colin Kaepernick.
“Quite honestly, being gay, I have stood with my hand over my heart during the national anthem and felt like I haven’t had my liberties protected,” she said at the time.
In 2019, Rapinoe similarly said she would “probably never” put her hand over her heart or sing the national anthem again. She said she was a “walking protest when it comes to the Trump administration” because of “everything I stand for, per Yahoo Sports.
“I feel like it’s kind of defiance in and of itself to just be who I am and wear the jersey, and represent it,” she added. “Because I’m as talented as I am, I get to be here, you don’t get to tell me if I can be here or not. So it’s kind of a good ‘F you’ to any sort of inequality or bad sentiments that the [Trump] administration might have towards people who don’t look exactly like him. Which, God help us if we all looked like him. Scary. Really scary. Ahh, disturbing.”
