Controversial soccer star Megan Rapinoe mentioned as we speak she is going to retire on the finish of the yr. The announcement comes on the eve of the ladies’s World Cup.

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

“I might have simply by no means imagined the place this lovely recreation would have taken me,” Rapinoe advised reporters at a information convention forward of a U.S. recreation towards Wales in San Jose, Calif., scheduled for Sunday.

In 2019, Rapinoe received the Ballon d’Or as soccer’s girls’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.

Rapinoe used her platform to criticize former President Donald Trump, and spoke out on LGBTQ+ rights and pay fairness for ladies soccer gamers.