Soccer

NWSL Week 14 in review: A big game from Megan Rapinoe puts Seattle back in the top 4

Without much of the star power from seasons past, Megan Rapinoe is helping keep Seattle in the playoff conversation.

Jul 25, 2017, 11:21 PM UTC

Soccer: Women’s National Team Friendly-Russia vs USA

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Seattle had to wonder if it was happening to them, too. If the thing that’s become inevitable lately was about to was about to claim the Reign as its latest victim. The thing, of course, is the Sky Blue FC comeback, one team’s early lead giving way to another’s penchant for late-game magic.

On Saturday, Seattle had to have, at some point, felt at least a little safe. The Reign, 56 minutes in, had a 4-0 lead over Sky Blue. And yes, Sky Blue, especially lately, has made a habit out of coming back from big deficits, but it’s usually climbing out of a one- or two-goal hole. Four is a number that, even with more than a half hour left to play, seems insurmountable, even for Sky Blue.

Even after Kelley O’Hara converted a penalty in the 60th minute to put Sky Blue on the board, there were still 30 minutes and three goals to overcome. And maybe that’s part of Sky Blue’s game plan: lull the opponent into a false sense of security, then slowly chip away at it. Or, in this case, not so slowly. Just as Sam Kerr scored three goals in the span of 12 minutes to turn Kansas City’s 2-0 lead into a 3-2 Sky Blue win three weeks ago, once Sky Blue got going on Saturday night, it became pretty hard not to see how it couldn’t happen again. This time, it wasn’t just Kerr, and for whatever it’s worth, it took 16 minutes instead of 12.

Four minutes after O’Hara scored to make the score 4-1, Leah Galton made it 4-2. Eight minutes after that, it was Daphne Corboz, scoring her first NWSL goal. Suddenly, it was 4-3 and Seattle’s insurmountable lead seemed anything but. Every game involving Sky Blue FC now is wild, and every game involving Sky Blue FC now is also, weirdly, predictable. That it was Kerr, because who else, really, would be the one to make it 4-4, her snapping header with just enough on it to get past Haley Kopmeyer, made the whole thing feel both completely crazy and like just another day at the office.

As the camera pans back to midfield after showing the replay of Kerr’s goal, Christine Nairn hands the ball off to Beverly Yanez for the restart. There’s a certain feeling of confusion and stunned silence when you watch it, like even the Reign — or maybe the Reign most of all — can’t believe that this is happening to them now, too.

But Seattle is also no stranger to that late-game thing, to going down early and coming back late. They’ve done it with full seasons. In 2015 this Reign team turned a slow start in April into a second consecutive NWSL Shield by September. In the 2014 semifinals, the Washington Spirit had a 1-0 lead for nearly 30 minutes before Seattle, in the 72nd minute, found the equalizer. Ten minutes after that, it was Megan Rapinoe who netted the game-winner, a goal that ultimately that sent the Spirit home and the Reign to face FC Kansas City in the championship.

Rapinoe, in particular, is no stranger to late-game magic. Most famously, it was from her foot that the cross to Abby Wambach’s head originated. The ball that led to the goal that, as Ian Darke put it then, “saved the USA’s life in this World Cup.”

On Saturday, it was again Rapinoe, though this one with the stakes decidedly lower — or at the very least, different — who saved Seattle’s life in this late-July regular season game. Even before she netted the game-winner in the 87th minute, her league-leading 12th goal of the season and one more than Kerr’s 11, Rapinoe was having a pretty good night. She’d already scored twice, first in the 27th minute with a curling free kick into the upper corner, then again in the 47th, converting a penalty after the entire Sky Blue defense took out Yanez in the box.

Back in the days of Women’s Professional Soccer, Rapinoe was drafted as the second overall pick by Chicago. She’d already made a handful of appearances with the USWNT by then, but her international career had also been stalled by injury. After two seasons with the Red Stars, and as WPS was barreling toward self-destruction, Rapinoe landed first in Philadelphia, making a handful of appearances for the Independence before being traded, reportedly for a lot of money, to the only WPS team that had a lot of money, MagicJack.

Rapinoe made her USWNT debut in 2006 while she was still in college at the University of Portland, but her national team career was put on hold after she suffered two ACL injuries, the first coming later in 2006, the second a year later. Ultimately, she wouldn’t become a consistent part of the USWNT picture until 2009.

It was July 2, 2011 when the rest of the world started to fall in love with Rapinoe. For three years before that she’d been a sometimes frustrating and not particularly notable part of whatever sometimes frustrating and not particularly notable thing Pia Sundhage was doing with the USWNT. But on that July day, as the U.S. faced Colombia in the group stage of the World Cup, Rapinoe announced her presence to the world. Minutes after entering the game, Rapinoe scored to give the U.S. a 2-0 lead. Then she ran to the corner, picked up what was either a small gray Muppet, a Komondor, or a field-level microphone, and serenaded everyone with the titular line from “Born in the USA.”

Seven days later, it was Rapinoe to Wambach, the cool calm of five PKs in the back of the net, the USWNT’s return to the larger cultural consciousness. Suddenly Rapinoe — along with her hair — was one of the team’s biggest and most recognizable stars.

Back in the U.S., WPS was all but dead, all the hope for a bump from the World Cup turning into some kind of horrible courtroom disaster that ultimately left the league to take its ball and go home, forever. Post-WPS, Rapinoe headed first to the W-League (both the Australian and American ones), then, in 2013, to France, where she signed a contract with Olympique Lyon.

That same year, Rapinoe was allocated to Seattle for the inaugural NWSL season. Because of her commitments to OL, Rapinoe didn’t join the Reign until late June. By then Seattle, winless in 10 games, had dug itself so deep a hole that even Rapinoe couldn’t save the team. The Reign was definitely better with her, though, and thanks in part to her presence — and the Spirit being terrible — managed to finish seventh on the eight-team table.

The following year Seattle signed just about everyone, had a nearly perfect season, won the NWSL Shield, and lost to FCKC in the title game. The year after that, a less perfect season, but the same results. For both of those, Rapinoe was a large part, but she certainly wasn’t the only part. Laura Harvey, who’s got the distinction of being not only the league’s only female coach, but also one of just two coaches (Chicago’s Rory Dames is the other) to spend all five seasons with one team, had, between the 2013 and 2014 seasons, convinced just about anyone you could think of to come play in Seattle. That included Kim Little and Nahomi Kawasumi. And alongside Rapinoe and hair twin/fellow midfielder Jess Fishlock, the Reign became an unstoppable force.

This season, a year after not making the playoffs for the first time since 2013, Seattle again struggled through the opening weeks. Saturday’s win finally put the Reign back into the top four, but even that is without much security — Seattle is still only a point clear of fifth place Sky Blue.

But that Seattle, with just six wins and a league-high six draws in 15 games, is even that high on the table is kind of remarkable. Little returned to play in England at the end of last season. Fishlock is out until August with an injury. Keelin Winters retired last year. Hope Solo is … somewhere that’s not a soccer field. Kawasumi is still around, of course, and leading the league in assists, but this Seattle team is, as a whole, not anything like its once dominant self.

That leaves Rapinoe to fill a much larger role with the Reign than she’s had to since the 2013 season. And so far, just as she did when she first joined the team five years ago, Rapinoe has come through, and Seattle, as a whole, is a better team for it.