Megan Rapinoe, star of the U.S. women’s national soccer team and MVP of the 2019 Women’s World Cup, singled out Colin Kaepernick in a speech Monday as she accepted an award for being one of Glamour magazine’s women of the year, saying, “I don’t feel like I would be here without” him.
She began her remarks with a lighthearted “shout-out to women this year. Every woman! We’re just killing it the whole year. So shout-out to just women in general.”
Then she turned more serious. Delivering a message that “we can move on from losing alone to the belief in winning together,” Rapinoe singled out the quarterback who has been out of the NFL since the spring of 2017 after his decision to kneel during the national anthem before games as one of her inspirations.