USA’s ahead #15 Megan Rapinoe (L) and USA’s midfielder #22 Kristie Mewis (R) react on the finish of the Australia and New Zealand 2023 Ladies’s World Cup spherical of 16 soccer match between Sweden and USA at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium in Melbourne on August 6, 2023. (Photograph by WILLIAM WEST / AFP)
Former US president Donald Trump took a swipe at his personal nation’s girls’s soccer crew on Sunday night after they crashed out of the World Cup on penalties to Sweden, declaring that “woke equals failure.”
Regardless of sealing American glory on the earlier two World Cups, the crew has turn out to be a lightning rod for anger from the US political proper, partly due to their advocacy for social justice.
Many conservatives have been notably chagrined by gamers taking the knee in the course of the nationwide anthem, in protest on the nation’s document on racial equality.
Their co-captain, Megan Rapinoe, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Trump’s successor, Joe Biden.
She was among the many gamers who missed penalties throughout Sunday’s shoot-out, because the Stars and Stripes made their earliest ever exit from a Ladies’s World Cup, after a 0-0 attract Melbourne.
Trump, who’s working for a White Home return within the 2024 election, wrote on his personal TruthSocial web site that the loss was “totally emblematic of what’s occurring to the our as soon as nice Nation below Crooked Joe Biden.”
US gamers look ahead to a nook kick in the course of the Ladies’s World Cup Group E soccer match between Portugal and the US at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. (AP Photograph/Andrew Cornaga)
“Lots of our gamers have been brazenly hostile to America – No different nation behaved in such a fashion, and even shut. Woke equals failure,” he wrote.
“Good shot Megan,” he added, in a jibe at Rapinoe, the previous Ballon d’Or and World Cup Golden Boot winner.
The 38-year-old, a central a part of the USA sides that received the 2015 and 2019 World Cups in addition to Olympic gold in 2012, is on the event for the fourth and remaining time earlier than retiring.
She was a key voice within the crew’s battle with the US federation for equal pay and circumstances and stays an unflinching advocate on racial equality, in addition to points affecting girls and the LGBTQ group.
For thus lengthy the face of girls’s soccer at house and overseas, she was near tears in her post-match interview after the 5-4 penalty loss.
“I imply, this is sort of a sick joke,” she stated. “For me personally, that is darkish comedy. I missed a penalty.”
Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination within the 2024 presidential election, faces a collection of authorized challenges forward of the nationwide polls, together with over allegations he tried to subvert the outcomes of the final election.
President Biden’s spouse, First Girl Jill Biden, supplied the crew extra comfort than Trump did.
“As we speak, you impressed us together with your grit and dedication. We’re pleased with you,” she tweeted.
“All the time keep in mind that you encourage girls and women all over the place to point out up and struggle for his or her goals.”
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