Here is an argument that the Women’s World Cup was not “an unmitigated failure” by the U.S. national team, as Fox Sports commentator and former men’s national player Alexi Lalas called it; that the Americans’ loss to Sweden in the round of 16 would “not be remembered as the day the United States women’s team hit rock bottom,” as it was characterized by a report in The Guardian.
Yes, the Yanks had squeaked into to the knockout round with a win and two ties, and their loss to the Swedes, despite being ranked No. 1 in the world and four times Cup champion, came earlier than in eight previous Cups. So, surprise! That’s sports. That’s part of the lure of it. There is no rubber-stamping a perceived favorite’s success.
And anyone who watched the U.S.-Sweden match had to notice that the Americans controlled the run of play, outshooting the third-ranked Swedes, 21-7. Were it not for the startling, cat-like reflexes of 27-year-old Swedish goalkeeper Zecira Musovic, repeatedly batting away shots ticketed for the back of the net, the Yanks would not have had to endure their own excruciating penalty-shot misses and the necessity of the latest goal-line video technology to confirm Sweden’s ultimate winner, which was not otherwise visible to the naked eye.
Musovic was spectacular, the real difference in a magnificent tug-of-war that went beyond two hours between two skilled, aggressive teams. Her performance was more to the point than so much of the post-match analysis by the sport’s chattering classes bent on assigning blame.
U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski was widely recommended for dismissal, taken to task for not showing confidence in his bench and assembling a roster that didn’t produce goals, didn’t better manage the midfield, didn’t show more cohesion, etc. Slate called the U.S. team “a shadow of its previous self.” Front Row Soccer enumerated what it judged to be U.S. failures by “looking back on a disaster of a tournament.”
ESPN piled on, too, lamenting the injuries to some American veterans, the drying up of the youth pipeline in the United States compared to the rest of the world, what is perceived as U.S. overconfidence and its players’ “lack of chemistry.” (During a stretch of poor games during the 1999 NBA season, Knicks guard Chris Childs argued that “chemistry is between lovers, not players.”)
Listen: There was a second team involved in that round-of-16 game, and the theatrical display by that other team’s goalkeeper, Musovic, is what repeatedly flummoxed the Americans and eventually put them on desolation row. If any individual must be “blamed” for turning the Yanks’ hearts to stone, that responsibility reasonably (and admiringly) could be attributed to Musovic. That was her job.
All the ferreting out of responsibility—the casting of aspersions on U.S. players, coaches, federation officials and the overall system—smacked of poor sportsmanship, exacerbated by Alexi Lalas’ assertion that the U.S. team had become “unlikeable” because of players’ progressive pronouncements away from the field. Not surprisingly, there were some nasty claims of poetic justice that retiring U.S. forward Megan Rapinoe—who has advocated for LGBTQ rights, equal pay for women in sports and racial justice—missed her penalty attempt.
At the end of a critical summation by The Athletic, which declared “this World Cup has raised massive existential questions about America’s ability to keep moving forward” and cast the result as some sort of apocalypse, someone with a sense of humor commented online, “I blame the Reynas”—aware of the messy aftermath to the men’s World Cup struggles. (Ask your hard-core soccer friends.)
Meanwhile, as the Swedes celebrated their victory, there came through the Melbourne stadium sound system a lively, familiar tune: “Dancing Queen.”
You can dance, you can jive/Having the time of your life.
See that girl/Watch that theme/
She is the Dancing Queen.
That was a No. 1 hit in the United States in the 1970s and lived on on Broadway and the movies. By the Swedish group ABBA.
Mamma Mia!