As she watched the ball sail over the crossbar and land somewhere in the shell-shocked crowd at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, all Megan Rapinoe could do was laugh.

Of course this was how it had to end.

After one of the longest and most decorated careers in the history of women's football, including two world titles, an Olympic gold medal, and a Ballon d'Or, her final act was sending a must-score penalty kick against Sweden into the stands.

She'd only ever missed one penalty before in her 20-year professional career, all the way back in 2018, and had won the Golden Boot at the 2019 Women's World Cup thanks, in part, to being the USA's dedicated penalty-taker (three of her six goals were from the spot, including one in the final).

But, then again, Rapinoe has never been one to do the expected thing.

"There's some dark humour: me missing a f***ing penalty at the end of this game," she said afterwards.

"I joke too often — always in the wrong places and inappropriately — so maybe this is 'ha-ha' at the end, I don't know.

Perhaps it was the perfect metaphor for Rapinoe herself: someone who had given all she could to the game for the past two decades, but whose time was finally, inevitably, and somewhat dramatically, up.

Like a number of players at this World Cup — Christine Sinclair, Sophie Schmidt, Ji So-Yun, Marta — Rapinoe is hanging up her boots once the circus rolls out of town.

Like them, too, her international career has ended not with the bang of a third consecutive World Cup trophy, but with the whimper of a round-of-16 exit: the USA's earliest ever in tournament history, following a series of underwhelming group stage performances.

The reckoning has already begun across USA football, with the federation going so far as to release a statement acknowledging their shortcomings.

The head coach, Vlatko Andonovski, will likely be eviscerated in the weeks to come for his tactical shallowness and questionable deployment of players, while those who love to watch the US women's national team lose — primarily those who hate everything they stand for — will be dancing in the streets.

To Rapinoe, who has for so long been the brightly-coloured figurehead of the team, this moment likely feels like a profound and earth-shattering loss.

But once the dust has settled and the rubble cleared away, the 38-year-old will not be remembered for this.

She will, instead, be remembered for everything that came before this.

In 2016, Rapinoe became the first white athlete to kneel in solidarity with black NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was himself protesting against police violence and racism, bringing the Black Lives Matter movement into the galaxy of sport.

For Rapinoe, her decision was an obvious one.

"Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties," she said at the time.

"It was something small that I could do and something that I plan to keep doing in the future and hopefully spark some meaningful conversation around it.

While she became a lightning-rod for criticism from right-wing media outlets, Rapinoe stood firm in her convictions and used the publicity to her advantage, advancing the conversation around institutionalised racism in sport and the responsibility all athletes have to uplift the marginalised.

That same year, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, and Rapinoe's voice grew even louder; she became what she herself described as "a walking protest" against Trump and everything he stood for, publicly calling him "racist," "sexist" and "misogynistic".

In 2019, when the USA were on their way to a fourth World Cup title, Rapinoe was asked whether she'd visit the White House during the post-tournament celebrations, as is tradition for American sports teams. She famously and cooly replied, "I'm not going to the f***ing White House."

That was the year that she, along with 27 of her US women's national team colleagues, filed a lawsuit against their governing body, US Soccer, accusing them of gender discrimination over their lack of equal pay and conditions for women athletes.

As they stormed to the title in France, spear-headed by the vocal Rapinoe, the world got on board.

During the World Cup final against the Netherlands, chants of "equal pay!" rang around the stands in Paris, with the team's success becoming their most powerful weapon in a fight that they eventually won, changing the game for women footballers everywhere.