Report: USWNT’s Rapinoe headed to French club Lyon in 2013

By Charles Boehm

While most of the U.S. Women’s National Team prepares to learn about their potential destinations in the new National Women’s Soccer League, one of the team’s brightest stars is apparently headed overseas to resume her professional career.

Megan Rapinoe’s father has told her hometown newspaper, the Redding Record Searchlight (Calif.) that she will join Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, the top women’s club in France and arguably the entire world, after she and her twin sister Rachael return from a holiday in Australia.

“The French team has shown great interest in her and offered her a nice contract,” said Jim Rapinoe. “She always wanted to play abroad.”

Buoyed by substantial investment from club chairman Jean-Michel Aulas, who brought the women’s team into the fold in 2004, Lyon have won the last two UEFA Women’s Champions League titles and are a dominant force in their country’s domestic league.

The current squad features French national team stars Louisa Necib, Camille Abily, Elodie Thomis and former Washington Freedom standout Sonia Bompastor, as well as Swedish striker Lotta Schelin.

Record Searchlight reporter Thomas Lawrence suggests that Rapinoe would return to the United States after six months to join NWSL.

But it’s unclear what allowances the new league, which would be well into its inaugural season by that point, will make for such a late arrival.

[ +Read the full report here ]