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Soccer World Cup

'They're icons': US women's champion team take victory parade in New York

Source: The Guardian
July 10, 2019 at 12:32
The US women’s soccer team, with Megan Rapinoe, at center, celebrates at City Hall after the ticker tape parade. Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP
The US women’s soccer team, with Megan Rapinoe, at center, celebrates at City Hall after the ticker tape parade. Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP
Women’s World Cup winners go down ‘Canyon of Heroes’

Amid confetti and chants of “equal pay” New York honored the U.S. women’s soccer team on Wednesday with a ticker-tape parade down the “Canyon of Heroes,” celebrating its World Cup triumph and paying tribute to the players’ emergence as “icons” of women’s rights.

The squad’s 2-0 win over Netherlands in the final match on Sunday capped a World Cup campaign that attracted vast television audiences and unprecedented public interest.

Wednesday’s parade down Broadway in New York’s financial district also cast a light on the team’s fight for equal pay with their counterparts on the U.S. men’s national team, and by extension, the issue of equal pay for equal work for women in general.
 

Megan Rapinoe holds the Women’s World Cup trophy on the parade float. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP
Megan Rapinoe holds the Women’s World Cup trophy on the parade float. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

As the parade kicked off, families pressed up again the metal police barriers, eager to catch a glimpse of players like Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd and Megan Rapinoe, the tournament’s top scorer and an outspoken team leader, as they rode on open floats along the parade route.

“It’s my absolute honor to lead this team out on the field,” Rapinoe said addressing the crowds from City Hall after the parade. “There’s no other place that I would rather be. Even in the presidential race. I’m busy, sorry.”

Rapinoe, who has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump and his administration, called for people to “hate less”.

“This is my charge to everyone: We have to be better. We have to love more. Hate less. We got to listen more and talk less… It’s our responsibility to make the world a better place.”
 



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