USWNT’s Megan Rapinoe talks ‘simple fixes’ for ‘must perform’ WWC match vs. Portugal

As the U.S. women’s national team waits to face Portugal to finish up their group stage of the Women’s World Cup on Tuesday night in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, two days out from the match, forward Megan Rapinoe said in a news conference she’s excited for the games ahead. Even if she didn’t quite know the math that would get the USWNT through to the knockout stage.

The match against Portugal is now “a must perform, must win,” she said. That’s not a new scenario for this squad.

“It’s a pressure moment, and that’s what the tournament is,” Rapinoe said. “Now every single game from here on out is that pressure moment. And that’s the best part of being in the World Cup.”

Rapinoe acknowledged the team knew going into their trip to New Zealand that they’d need to build into the tournament and through the matches — and because they knew it, the team isn’t spending time worrying about it. “It’s different from a lot of other years,” she said. “The whole time, we’ve had players coming back from injury, we’ve had different lineups, we’ve had players playing with a lot of different people around them and not having that consistency.”

There’s also the culture of the USWNT to fall back on, which is much larger than any one player.

“We go into…