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The United States girls’s nationwide workforce’s relationship with the nationwide anthem has develop into difficult over time. Previously, some members of the workforce have taken a knee because the tune performed previous to the kickoff of a match.
However, when the USWNT lined up on the sector previous to the beginning of their opening 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup match in opposition to Vietnam, the vast majority of the workforce stood throughout the taking part in of “Star Spangled Banner,” though a lot of the gamers appeared to stay silent.
The complete opposing workforce appeared to passionately sing as Vietnam’s nationwide anthem “Tiến Quân Ca,” or “Music of a Marching Military” was performed. The gamers appeared to sing in unison, and all eleven athletes held their proper fingers over their hearts.
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![United States soccer players line up before the start of the FIFA Womens World Cup](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/07/US-women-soccer.jpg)
The US beginning eleven line up throughout the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023 Group E match between the USA and Vietnam at Eden Park on July 22, 2023, in Auckland, New Zealand. (Carmen Mandato/USSF/Getty Photographs)
Six of the 11 American soccer gamers who stood on the sector at Eden Park in New Zealand stood with the fingers to their aspect or behind their again because the anthem performed.
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The remaining 5 gamers positioned their fingers over their hearts because the tune blared all through the stadium.
Julie Ertz, Alyssa Naeher and Lindsey Horan have been seen mouthing the phrases to the tune whereas the remainder of the workforce appeared stood stoically.
A pair of essential victories in 2022 punched Vietnam’s first-ever ticket to the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup. The newcomers’ historic look on the sport’s largest stage marked a brand new chapter in girls’s soccer in Vietnam.
Since its inception in 1997, the Vietnamese girls’s nationwide workforce has confronted an uphill battle within the combat to realize entry to the identical quantity of sources because the male workforce historically acquired. Previously, some members of the workforce would reportedly tackle different jobs as a result of low pay they acquired for enjoying on the nationwide workforce.
The Vietnamese girls actually entered their first World Cup match with an excellent sense of pleasure, given what they’d achieved by qualifying for the World Cup, and their ardour was on full show as their nationwide anthem performed.
![United States women's players line up before a match](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/07/USWNT-national-anthem.jpg)
Savannah DeMelo, #9, Julie Ertz, #8, and Naomi Girma, #4, of the US line up throughout the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023 Group E match between the USA and Vietnam at Eden Park on July 22, 2023, in Auckland, New Zealand. (Carmen Mandato/USSF/Getty Photographs)
Nevertheless, as soon as the match started, the USNWT workforce’s elite expertise was additionally on full show. The reigning two-time FIFA Ladies’s World Cup champions defeated Vietnam 3-0 within the workforce’s historic sport. Workforce USA is as soon as once more the favourite to win this 12 months’s title.
U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe turned one of many first outstanding feminine athletes to take a knee throughout the nationwide anthem in solidarity with former NFL participant Colin Kaepernick’s silent protest in opposition to police brutality and social injustice in 2016.
Kaepernick started the peaceable protest on Aug. 14, 2016, earlier than the beginning of a preseason sport. His gesture didn’t garner a lot consideration till the third time he did it previous to the beginning of one other preseason sport on August 26.
![Megan Rapinoe kneels during the National Anthem](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/07/Megan-Rapinoe-kneels.jpg)
Megan Rapinoe, #15, kneels throughout the Nationwide Anthem previous to the match between the US and the Netherlands at Georgia Dome on September 18, 2016, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Photographs)
Rapinoe is taking part in in her remaining World Cup. Earlier this month, Rapinoe stated she’s going to retire from professional soccer on the finish of the 2023 Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League season.
She has additionally been outspoken on a protracted checklist of social points all through her profession together with, LGBTQ+ rights, racial inequality, voter rights and gender and pay fairness.
Within the weeks main up 2019 FIFA Ladies’s World Cup Rapinoe acknowledged that she would “by no means put my hand over my coronary heart” throughout the taking part in of the nationwide anthem.
“I’ll in all probability by no means sing the nationwide anthem once more,” she stated on the time.
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Throughout a 2021 match in opposition to Australia, just one member of the American girls’s soccer workforce opted in opposition to kneeling because the “Star Spangled Banner” performed.
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