Megan Rapinoe celebrates with the FIFA Women's World Cup Trophy. (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)

Eight Nike posters featuring world cup star Megan Rapinoe were vandalised with homophobic slurs at a subway station on Monday, the New York Police Department told USA TODAY.

The graffiti on images of the openly gay US soccer captain was reported on Monday morning, and included the phrases “screw this ho” and “shemale.”

Hubert Reyes, a detective for the New York Police Department, told USA TODAY that the department’s hate crimes task force had opened an investigation into the incident.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) deputy communications director Shams Tarek said in a statement, according to the site: “Hate has no place in the transit system and we work hard to make the subway a welcoming, safe environment for everyone.

“We referred this to NYPD which responded to investigate, our maintenance teams got the posters cleaned and we will have them replaced with new ones if necessary.”

The anti-gay messages on Megan Rapinoe posters were reported on Twitter and have since been removed

The vandalism at Manhattan’s Bryant Park subway station was reported to New York City Subway via Twitter.

A Twitter user wrote: “Ok Monday morning! There’s anti-gay hate crime graffiti on every # MeganRapinoe poster in # BryantPark.”

The New York City Subway responded in only four minutes asking for more details and then later wrote: “We wanted to let you know that we referred this to NYPD which responded to investigate, our maintenance teams got the posters cleaned and will have them replaced with new ones if necessary.

“Thanks again for bringing this to our attention.”

The Twitter user who reported the vandalism later posted pictures to confirm that the posters had been cleaned, and captioned them: “Btw yes I did check and yes they really all were fixed.”

Yesterday, in an interview for CNN, Rapinoe gave a message to Donald Trump: “You’re excluding me, you’re excluding people that look like me, you’re excluding people of colour.”