For three group stage games in this World Cup, the US women’s soccer team didn’t play its best. But still it survived.
In one Round-of-16 knockout game, the Americans finally played their best — and yet they were ousted.
And they have no one to blame but themselves.
The shocking end of the quest for an unprecedented three-peat for the two-time defending champions teaches one of sports cruelest lessons: What might have been.
Not for what happened on the field early Sunday morning against Sweden in Melbourne, where the American side finally put together the brand of end-to-end, connected, aggressive play that brought the team to the tournament ranked No. 1 in the world. Nightmares of missed penalty kicks will surely haunt Megan Rapinoe, Sophia Smith, and Kelley O’Hara, just as the near-miraculous double save Alyssa Naeher almost made on the clincher will live on in replay infamy. Naeher wasn’t wrong when she said, “We just lost the World Cup by a millimeter.”
But she wasn’t completely right either. What the United States will, and should, truly rue for years to come are those initial round-robin games, when the team was alternately disconnected, uninspired, and ultimately outplayed — ceding the group, and a much more favorable Round-of-16 opponent, to the Netherlands.
This final loss to Sweden — a stunning, heartbreaking decision reached after seven rounds of penalty kicks, after 120 scoreless minutes against the world’s No. 3 team, after so many point-blank saves by Swedish keeper Zecira Musovic — is nothing to be ashamed of. It was an absolute banger of a game, a showcase for a women’s international field that gets more and more competitive by the year, a chess match of lineup changes and substitutions that had no choice but to finally crown a winner.
It is Sweden that moves on, next facing sizzling Japan in the quarterfinals, while the United States heads home, its earliest exit from the World Cup in history.
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From [Globe.com](https://Globe.com):
By Tara Sullivan
For three group stage games in this World Cup, the US women’s soccer team didn’t play its best. But still it survived.
In one Round-of-16 knockout game, the Americans finally played their best — and yet they were ousted.
And they have no one to blame but themselves.
The shocking end of the quest for an unprecedented three-peat for the two-time defending champions teaches one of sports cruelest lessons: What might have been.
Not for what happened on the field early Sunday morning against Sweden in Melbourne, where the American side finally put together the brand of end-to-end, connected, aggressive play that brought the team to the tournament ranked No. 1 in the world. Nightmares of missed penalty kicks will surely haunt Megan Rapinoe, Sophia Smith, and Kelley O’Hara, just as the near-miraculous double save Alyssa Naeher almost made on the clincher will live on in replay infamy. Naeher wasn’t wrong when she said, “We just lost the World Cup by a millimeter.”
But she wasn’t completely right either. What the United States will, and should, truly rue for years to come are those initial round-robin games, when the team was alternately disconnected, uninspired, and ultimately outplayed — ceding the group, and a much more favorable Round-of-16 opponent, to the Netherlands.
This final loss to Sweden — a stunning, heartbreaking decision reached after seven rounds of penalty kicks, after 120 scoreless minutes against the world’s No. 3 team, after so many point-blank saves by Swedish keeper Zecira Musovic — is nothing to be ashamed of. It was an absolute banger of a game, a showcase for a women’s international field that gets more and more competitive by the year, a chess match of lineup changes and substitutions that had no choice but to finally crown a winner.
It is Sweden that moves on, next facing sizzling Japan in the quarterfinals, while the United States heads home, its earliest exit from the World Cup in history.