When Megan Rapinoe met Ada Hegerberg: ‘Euro 2022? Everyone was late to the party’

It’s been three years since Olympique Lyonnais acquired a majority stake in Seattle-based NWSL club Reign FC, forging an international sisterhood between women’s clubs unlike any model in professional sports.

The partnership has brought some of the world’s best known players into the same organizational stable, including Lyon’s Ada Hegerberg (who won the Ballon d’Or in 2018) and OL Reign’s Megan Rapinoe (who claimed the trophy in 2019). Ahead of their clubs’ joint US tour, Rapinoe and Hegerberg sat down for an exclusive conversation with the Guardian to discuss their teams’ unique sorority, their impressions of England’s epochal Euro 2022 triumph and their hopes for next year’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

What were your thoughts on Euro 2022 and how it seemed to penetrate English culture, not unlike the 1999 World Cup in the United States?

Rapinoe My overarching feeling was like, everyone’s late to the party. This is not surprising to me at all. I feel like I’ve known that the level of play was going to be that [high]. I knew that the European teams, especially in the last five years with the rise of the club game, have been sensational. Of course this was going to be how it was going to go. We literally grow gardens out of cement every single time. Tell me one women’s tournament in the last 15 years that hasn’t exceeded expectations. Part of it is like: “Welcome, everybody, to the party. You’re extremely fucking late, but fine.” And I feel proud about that. Ada should feel the same and all the women’s players should feel the same because we did this. We did this. We put this into motion through literally sheer will, while also being the best players in the world.

The way that the English players held