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Highlights from the USWNT’s victory parade in New York City | 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup

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Lower Manhattan turned into a river of confetti and blue jerseys for the champs of the world.

New York City rolled out the red carpet — or rather, thousands of pounds of ticker tape — for the U.S. Women’s National Team on Wednesday, July 10, 2019. Three days after beating the Netherlands 2–0 in Lyon, France, to claim a fourth FIFA Women’s World Cup title, the team wound down Broadway’s Canyon of Heroes to a crowd that packed the sidewalks for blocks. What started as a championship celebration quickly became something bigger: a rally for equal pay, delivered from a podium outside City Hall.

• Tens of thousands of fans lined lower Manhattan as co-captains Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, and Carli Lloyd rode floats with coach Jill Ellis, popping Champagne and hoisting the World Cup trophy.
• Mayor Bill de Blasio and First Lady Chirlane McCray presented the players and staff with keys to the city during a ceremony at City Hall.
• Crowds repeatedly chanted “Equal pay!” — loudest when U.S. Soccer Federation President Carlos Cordeiro took the stage amid the team’s active gender discrimination lawsuit against the USSF.

A Fourth Star, Delivered in Style

The Canyon of Heroes has hosted ticker-tape parades for World Series champions, Super Bowl winners, and astronauts, and on this day it belonged entirely to the USWNT. Rapinoe, who took home both the Golden Ball as the tournament’s best player and the Golden Boot as its top scorer, was the clear centerpiece as floats rolled from Battery Park toward City Hall. Fans who couldn’t get near the barricades still packed the surrounding blocks, waving flags and chanting player names as the team’s ninth major trophy run — and fourth World Cup specifically — was made official with keys to the city from de Blasio and McCray.

The Equal Pay Chants Take Over

The celebration never stopped being a soccer parade, but it doubled as something closer to a protest rally the moment Cordeiro stepped to the microphone. Chants of “Equal pay!” that had rippled through the crowd all morning swelled into a full roar as the USSF president tried to address the team directly amid its ongoing gender discrimination lawsuit against the federation.

Cordeiro didn’t dodge it. “We hear you. We believe in you. And we’re committed to doing right by you,” he told the crowd — a direct answer to the pressure that had built since the team filed suit against U.S. Soccer back in March, and one Rapinoe engaged with onstage rather than shouting down.

Rapinoe’s Message From the Podium

Rapinoe used her keynote moment to talk about the team itself as much as the fight for pay — leaning into the diversity of the roster that had just won the world’s biggest stage in women’s soccer.

“We got pink hair and purple hair. We have tattoos and dreadlocks. We got white girls and black girls. And everything in between. Straight girls and gay girls.”

She closed by asking the crowd to “love more, hate less” and to be better citizens — a line that landed as both a mission statement for the team and a plea for the city, and country, watching. It was the kind of moment that has made women’s soccer’s biggest stars as recognizable off the pitch as on it this summer.

Straight From Broadway to the ESPYs

There was no time to linger. Once the City Hall ceremony wrapped, the team boarded flights for Los Angeles to attend the ESPY Awards later that night — turning a morning of confetti and equal-pay chants into a same-day cross-country sprint, still riding the high of a trophy they’d lifted in Lyon less than 72 hours earlier.