Lodi News-Sentinel

WOODS READY TO DEFEND TITLE

- By Sarah Valenzuela

Megan Rapinoe shreds Jill Ellis in her new book, describing exactly when and why the relationsh­ip between the two went sour.

Rapinoe has always been the outspoken leader of the U.S. women’s national soccer team. It’s too bad she didn’t always have the support of her coach, at least according to her memoir “One Life.”

Rapinoe accused Ellis of not supporting her when she took a knee during the playing of the national anthem in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and in protest of police brutality.

“The critics yell really loud and I had a federation who clearly didn’t support me and, I felt, a coach who really didn’t support me,” Rapinoe wrote in her book, which was excerpted by BBC, “but I had so many people around me who always stuck by me and were with me the whole time.”

Rapinoe started kneeling during the national anthem on Sept. 4. 2016 during a NWSL match between Rapinoe’s Seattle Reign and the Chicago Red Stars. She continued that protest to a USWNT match again Thailand less than two weeks later. Ellis had, before the match, said publicly she expected all her players to stand during the anthem.

The silent protest was met with almost swift punishment from U.S. Soccer and Ellis. U.S. Soccer released a statement condemning the action without directly naming Rapinoe. Ellis removed Rapinoe from the next starting lineup, told her not to even dress for the two games following that and then removed her entirely for the She Believes Cup, Rapinoe said.

“It was so dysfunctio­nal, so dishonest, such utter, evasive bulls---, that my interactio­ns with Jill became strained,” Rapinoe wrote in a section shared by Insider.

“After opening the NWSL season on fire, I slipped back into (national team) training as if nothing had happened, and I can’t tell you how crazy that made me,” Rapinoe wrote recalling the following year. “I knew what she’d done, and she knew I knew what she’d done, and while in conversati­on with her I might have been superficia­lly cordial, my vibe said something else.”

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