Whatever your views of the president, to be yelled at online by the most powerful man in the world would represent to most people an alarming brush with authority. Wasn’t there a tiny part of Rapinoe that thought: “What have I done?”

“The only moment where I was like ‘Aaaargh!’ was when I thought: ‘Is this going to affect the team in some way?’ I didn’t want that to happen. But actually I have the opposite [view of] authority – my sister and I both.” Rapinoe’s non-identical twin sister, Rachael, is a former professional footballer. “I wouldn’t say that we’re anti-authority, but when there’s a person who is abusing their power or manipulating people, whether it’s a teacher when I was younger or Donald Trump now, there’s nothing that fires me up and grinds my gears more. I was just like: ‘No. That’s not happening.’”

One of the most delicious aspects of Rapinoe’s fight with the president was watching him malfunction under the weight of his own contradictions. “We are everything he loves,” says Rapinoe – sportspeople, winners, Team America – “with the exception that we’re powerful, strong women. And he was having a really hard time – you could see in these sets of tweets: you hate us, you love us, you want us to come [to the White House] – and you are threatening us, all at the same time.”