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    How the U.S. Was Eliminated From the Women’s World Cup, Shot by Shot

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    The shootout was rapid-fire, but still agonizing for both Sweden, which moved to the World Cup quarterfinals, and the United States, which was eliminated.Under an ink black Australian sky above Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, the Women’s World Cup game between the United States and Sweden on Sunday went on and on and on. For 120 minutes, it went on as the teams tried unsuccessfully to score, with nearly 28,000 fans so nervous that they could only muster a simmer of cheers. Until penalty kicks turned up the volume and decided it all.That’s when the United States’ recent dominance in the World Cup fully ended, and the Americans were left stunned and devastated by their worst showing at the quadrennial tournament. They had arrived as the favorites after winning two consecutive championships, in 2015 and 2019. But on Sunday, in the round of 16, three missed penalty kicks and a razor-thin goal by Sweden changed their fate.Sophia Smith, who missed an opportunity to win for the United States, had to be consoled by her teammates as she sat on the field in tears. Kelley O’Hara, in her fourth World Cup, stormed by reporters and stared straight ahead in silence after the game, moments after her penalty shot hit the right post and bounced away.And Megan Rapinoe, the outspoken and accomplished U.S. forward who had been relegated to a reserve at this World Cup, grew teary when discussing that her international career would end with her missing a penalty kick, calling it “a sick joke.” Just a week ago, Rapinoe was asked what the team’s legacy would be if it failed to win the world title yet again. She answered, “I haven’t thought about that.”Now she won’t forget it. Sweden won the shootout, 5-4, to eliminate the United States.Alex Morgan, the star U.S. forward, called it “a bad dream.”“I’m really disappointed with myself, and I wish I could have provided more with this team,” said Morgan, who was on the bench for the shootouts because she had been replaced by Rapinoe earlier. She didn’t score during the entire tournament.Julie Ertz, who rushed back to the team after having a baby a year ago, said it was sweet to see her son in the stands after the match. “But it still hurts to lose a game like that,” she said. She walked off, wiping the wet, smeared mascara from under her eyes.It all came apart for the United States in a flurry of 14 kicks. Here’s how they unfolded, emotions included:Players from the United States, left, and Sweden reacting and cheering during the shootout.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/ReutersAndi Sullivan, the midfielder, is up first to face Sweden’s goalkeeper, Zecira Musovic, with her teammates lined up behind her, many arm in arm. She walks over to the spot with the death stare of a gunslinger, then nails the shot into the lower left of the goal. Sullivan spins back toward her teammates and pumps a fist. The crowd finally comes alive and chants: “U-S-A! U-S-A!” U.S. 1, Sweden 0.Andi Sullivan got the United States off to a good start, by nailing a shot into the lower left of the goal.Robert Cianflone/Getty ImagesFridolina Rolfo, a 5-foot-10 forward who has been on the national team for 10 years, is up first for Sweden against goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher about a month after winning the Champions League with Barcelona. She sends the ball into the right side of the net, her blond ponytail swinging behind her. She flexes her arms and opens her mouth wide to shout in celebration, and the Swedish fans, many clad in bright yellow and sitting right behind the goal, explode into cheers. U.S. 1, Sweden 1.One of the U.S. co-captains, Lindsey Horan, has a familiar, ferocious “don’t mess with me” look on her face. It’s the look she had just before she scored the equalizer in the 1-1 tie versus the Netherlands in the group stage. It’s much tougher than the softer approach she took for much of last week with her teammates, as she encouraged the 14 World Cup rookies, one by one, to play with more confidence. The Swedish fans are booing her, competing with the U.S. cheers. But Horan is steely and delivers the ball precisely to the left side, rocketing it into the net. U.S. 2, Sweden 1.Lindsey Horan scored.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesElin Rubensson celebrated scoring with Magdalena Eriksson.Hannah Mckay/ReutersElin Rubensson, a midfielder who returned to soccer just two months after having a baby in 2020, evidently decides that Horan picked a wonderful place to put the ball into the net. So she sends the ball there, too — and Naeher can’t get to it. U.S. 2, Sweden 2.Up next is Kristie Mewis, whose little sister, Sam, won the World Cup title with the United States in 2019. The elder Mewis exhales hard before she shoots with her left foot and sends the ball into the right side of the goal. The stadium starts to rumble. U.S. 3, Sweden 2.Kristie Mewis celebrated her goal with her teammates.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNathalie Bjorn missed.Robert Cianflone/Getty ImagesThe fans are starting to think this might never end. Nathalie Bjorn, the right back for Sweden, tries to shoot into the left corner, but the ball has other ideas. It goes flying over the goal and the Sweden fans sigh in unison. She buries her face in her hands. The momentum has changed. Peter Gerhardsson, Sweden’s coach, says after the game: “You’re just waiting. You want it to be over, and you want it to go your way.” U.S. 3, Sweden 2.The U.S. fans go wild when Megan Rapinoe walks up. She had come in for Morgan as a substitute and was sure the ball would go straight into the back of the net, just as it had so many times before, including in the final of the 2019 World Cup. This is her final World Cup, her fourth one, after she announced in July that she would retire this year. But now, her shot isn’t even close.She sends the ball flying over the goal. On the way back to her team, she smiles because she just can’t believe it. This is how an international career ends? She thinks she last missed a penalty shot maybe in 2018.“That’s some dark humor, me missing,” she says after the game. “I feel like I joke too often, always in the wrong places and inappropriately, so maybe this is ha-ha at the end.” U.S. 3, Sweden 2.Megan Rapinoe missed.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAlyssa Naeher saved Rebecka Blomqvist’s shot.James Ross/EPA, via ShutterstockSweden’s Rebecka Blomqvist shoots and Naeher makes a superhero-like dive to knock the shot down. U.S. 3, Sweden 2.The United States scored only four goals at this World Cup, and forward Sophia Smith scored half of them. She can win it for the U.S. team, and takes her time setting up. When she connects with the ball, it soars over the right side of the post. The win was there for the taking, and she couldn’t grab it. She buries her face in her black-gloved hands. She will not be the star today. Horan tells her later: “The best players in the world miss.” Smith explains to reporters later: “But you’ve got to remember, this is part of football. You get back up and it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt for forever.” U.S. 3, Sweden 2.Sophia Smith, right, was consoled by Lindsey Horan.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesHanna Bennison scored.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHanna Bennison, a substitute for Sweden, has a chance to save her team from what had looked like disaster. She scores, sending her team into a frenzy. Gerhardsson says later: “Accept that you are nervous, so that being nervous doesn’t make you more nervous.” U.S. 3, Sweden 3.There’s a rumble among U.S. fans when they see who is taking the next shot: It’s Alyssa Naeher, the goalkeeper. She has flipped the switch in her head and is now taking on Musovic, her counterpart. Her shot goes smack into the middle of the goal after Musovic guesses wrong. U.S. 4, Sweden 3.Alyssa Naeher, who is also the U.S. goalkeeper, took one of the penalties and scored.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesSweden celebrated Magdalena Eriksson’s penalty.Robert Cianflone/Getty ImagesMagdalena Eriksson, a seasoned center back, needs to score to keep Sweden alive. And she delivers to the upper right corner. Sweden 4, U.S. 4.It’s up to Kelley O’Hara, in her fourth World Cup. She sprints to the spot. She wants to win this game and this tournament and has rallied her team to have confidence that it will do both. But her shot bounces off the right post and away along the baseline.Kelley O’Hara missed.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/ReutersSweden fans celebrated.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSweden’s fans start to party, waving their blue-and-yellow flags and dancing. Naeher says she feels terrible for her teammates who missed: “They’ve trained for it. They’ve prepared for it. And, you know, unfortunately, those things happen. My heart hurts for them.” Sweden 4, U.S. 4.Naeher conceding the winning goal by Lina Hurtig. Naeher appeared to have saved it, but the ball crossed the goal line by the slimmest of margins.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLina Hurtig waited for a decision by the referee, Stéphanie Frappart.Hamish Blair/Associated PressSweden players celebrate.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLina Hurtig, the forward who scored when Sweden humbled the United States at the Tokyo Olympics, can win it. She shoots toward the left side of the goal. Naeher leaps for it, hitting it once with both hands to make it fly upward. The ball goes up, and Naeher hits it again with her right arm while on the ground, stretched backward, to keep it out of the goal.Did it go in, after all? Naeher insists she saved it. Hurtig raises her arms, and shadows the referee, Stéphanie Frappart, to make her case for a goal. The play is reviewed with cameras and tracking technology.Then Frappart waves her arms: The game is over; it is ruled a goal. Hurtig takes off toward her teammates and the Swedish players run onto the field to celebrate.The ball, indeed, had crossed entirely into the goal, according to the replay system. By the looks of it, the margin may be a millimeter. “I thought I had it. Unfortunately it must have just slipped in. But that’s tough. Ugh, we just lost the World Cup. It’s heartbreak,” Naeher says. Sweden 5, U.S. 4.Sweden’s players looking at a phone displaying the goal line technology that led to the decision on the final penalty. Alex Pantling/FIFA, via Getty Images More

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      What Is the World Cup Headband Worn By the U.S. Players?

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      Alex Morgan can easily rattle off the colors of the headbands worn by her United States teammates.She wears pink, as does Rose Lavelle. Sophia Smith likes black. Julie Ertz prefers a shade closer to Tiffany blue. Lindsey Horan wears red, mostly because Morgan doesn’t.“One of the first times I wore pink, someone said I’m trying to copy Alex Morgan,” Horan said.Morgan laughed. “I never knew that,” she said.Soccer’s favorite headband, though, isn’t a headband at all. The sheer colored strips keeping some of the world’s best athletes’ hair in place is actually what is known as pre-wrap — a thin, stretchy medical gauze intended to be wrapped around injured knees or ankles before they are taped, in part to protect the skin.And while both men and women long ago co-opted the athletic dressing for a more prominent purpose in their hair, Morgan and other women’s soccer players have turned pre-wrap into a symbol of women’s sports — and soccer in particular — to accent their team kits and express individuality on the field.“There is a kind of unique, almost strategic use of pre-wrap in women’s soccer,” said Rachel Allison, a sociology professor at Mississippi State who has studied how the sport has marketed itself. “Obviously, wearing the headband can be functional in terms of holding your hair back while you’re playing the sport, but I think it’s become far more than that.”Morgan, for example, began wearing pink pre-wrap so that her parents could pick her out in a sea of ponytails on the soccer field, and later chose the color to honor her mother-in-law, who is a breast cancer survivor. Morgan is now even sponsored by one of the primary manufacturers of pre-wrap, Mueller Sports Medicine.“These are forms of individual self expression, but they’re also really important to how we’re marketing women’s sport,” Allison said. “They become part of the storytelling that we do around who these women are, not only as players, but also people in ways that help to connect to the audience.”The pre-wrap features prominently in the branding of the players, including how they are portrayed in various merchandise. Before the tournament, goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher shared a picture of a figurine clipped to her bag that depicted Becky Sauerbrunn, the defender and former captain of the U.S. team who is out of the World Cup with a foot injury, complete with a pink strip across her forehead.Brett Mueller, the chief executive of Mueller Sports Medicine, said the company originally began producing pre-wrap in the 1970s for use in the N.F.L. and N.B.A., but it became popular as a hair accessory for women and girls after referees said they couldn’t wear hard plastic barrettes or clips because of injury risks. Quickly, he said, his company had to expand its color offerings from the original tan, first to popular school colors and then to a brighter, wider range — including pink.“It’s exciting that these athletes — and our team is so good, too — are using our product,” Mueller said, adding: “But we didn’t design it for that.”Allison said that when she played college soccer at Grinnell College in Iowa, where she graduated in 2007, a couple of her teammates wore the gauzy headbands. Many more people do now, she said.“It’s not uncommon to see other people, especially girls or young women, wearing pre-wrap when they’re in the stands watching,” Allison said. “It’s a way for them to symbolize their fandom.”There are two camps of pre-wrap headbands: those who roll it into thin, tubular strands that stand up slightly on their heads, like Morgan and Horan, and those who spread it flat on top of their hair, like Smith and Ertz. The method matters — midfielder Rose Lavelle wears pink pre-wrap, but as a member of Team Flat, she’s safe from comparisons to Morgan.And while it’s most obvious in the players’ hair, Morgan said the team also uses pre-wrap for its originally intended purpose: underneath their shin guards and also to tape up ankles.“Pre-wrap is everywhere,” Morgan said. “You look in the bins, and it’s endless pre-wrap.” More

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      A New Era of Soccer Moms Navigates a Rapidly Changing Game

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      Women have long blended motherhood and elite sports. But as soccer expands its support systems, it is also demanding ever more of its players.Julie Ertz was on the clock.On one sunny morning in May, Ertz, a defender for the United States women’s soccer team, rolled out of bed early to dress and feed her infant son, Madden, and pack him for a trip. Then she scrambled to collect her soccer gear and headed off to a meeting with her club team, which was followed by several hours of practice.As soon as training ended, Ertz was back in her car, hustling to deliver her mother-in-law and Madden to the airport in Los Angeles for a flight to Phoenix. At their home there, Ertz’s husband, the Arizona Cardinals tight end Zach Ertz, would take over parenting duties for several days while Julie and her National Women’s Soccer League team, Angel City F.C., played a match on the East Coast.In the days and weeks that followed there would be more days like that one: more airport farewells and happy reunions, more training sessions and road trips, more time away from Madden and Zach. As Ertz, 31, described this crazy schedule and her daily challenges juggling roles as a soccer star and a first-time mother, her eyes filled with tears.“I didn’t know if I’d be back,” she said of returning to soccer only months after Madden’s birth, in hopes of playing in her third Women’s World Cup. “I just didn’t know if that was going to be logistically possible. I don’t think any athlete wants to ever hang up their boots. But, you know, you become a mom and your whole life changes.”Parenthood has long created professional hurdles for women in every occupation, but also professional consequences: lost jobs, missed promotions and even promising careers sacrificed to the realization that motherhood and full-time work can sometimes feel incompatible, as there are rarely enough hours in the day to give 100 percent to both.That calculus is no different for world-class soccer players like Ertz and the other moms playing at the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand — a cohort that includes two other members of the U.S. team, Alex Morgan and Crystal Dunn, but also players from countries including France, Germany and Jamaica.As professional athletes, they all had spent years taking care of their bodies, honing their performances, plotting their careers — focused, ultimately, on themselves. Having children changed that. “Now I can’t steal a nap if I wanted to,” said Dunn, who has a 1-year-old son, Marcel.In interviews, players who chose to step away the sport to have a baby, said they did so asking themselves the same difficult questions: Will my body ever be the same? Will my focus ever be as sharp? Will I even want to return?But as women’s soccer experiences a surge of interest and investment that has professionalized the game, raised incomes and made it harder than ever to keep a place on the world’s best teams, athletes who want children are facing a new question:How much room is there in elite soccer for moms?Casey Krueger, right, did not make the U.S. World Cup roster after racing to get back on the field after her pregnancy. Brad Smith/USSF, via Getty ImagesHard ChoicesCasey Krueger, a defender on the U.S. team since 2016, thought she could make it back in time for this World Cup. When she found out she was pregnant in 2021, the tournament was still nearly two years away. But after she had a baby boy last July, she worried she might not have enough time to make the roster.An emergency cesarean section had complicated her delivery, so she hired a pelvic floor therapist to work with her and hopefully hasten her return. By April, Krueger felt she was close: During a friendly match against Ireland, she looked to be in pre-pregnancy form.Yet she did not make the final cut. During her time off, other players had moved ahead of her on the U.S. depth chart. She is watching the World Cup from home.“It was a risk I was willing to take,” Kreuger said in a video call, as her son wiggled in her arms, before the U.S. team was named. “But as soon as you see their precious face, you realize that they’re worth anything.”Players worldwide are taking that risk, or at least taking control of their choices. The former U.S. midfielder Carli Lloyd, for example, said she chose not to play on into her 40s because she and her husband wanted to start a family. Another U.S. player, Becky Sauerbrunn, decided to freeze her eggs last year while she continued her career.Germany midfielder Melanie Leupolz is playing in the World Cup after having a baby last year, but one of her former teammates, goalkeeper Almuth Schult, is pregnant with her third child and is not. Jamaica has two mothers on its roster. One, Cheyna Matthews, has three sons. In a video published before the World Cup, she choked up when describing how one of her boys always asks why she has to be away from home for “too many days.”“We just sacrifice a lot to do what we do,” she said.U.S. Soccer, the governing body of soccer in the United States, said there have been 17 mothers who have played on its national team in its history, starting with Joan Dunlap in the mid-1980s.Morgan, the star U.S. striker, and her husband, the former player Servando Carrasco, employ a nanny to help care for their 3-year-old daughter, Charlie. But Morgan, 34, prefers to bring Charlie along on many of her trips with the U.S. team, at times setting up an inflatable bed so her daughter can sleep next to her in hotels.“You basically tend to your child like every step that you’re not on the soccer field or in the gym or in a meeting,” Morgan said. “I think it just gets easier, or maybe it doesn’t get easier, but you get more used to kind of wearing multiple hats all the time.”At times, Morgan said, the “aunties” on the team take over as unpaid babysitters because her husband or other family members aren’t always available on team trips, part of the kind of extended, unofficial family on which many of soccer’s moms rely. After one exhibition match this spring, for example, Charlie tugged at her mom’s shorts during an unsuccessful search for defender Emily Fox. “Where’s Foxy?” Charlie kept asking. “I want Foxy!”But the aunties can only do so much. So for years, U.S. Soccer has subsidized nanny care on road trips. The initial gains were made after pressure from the team’s early mothers, but over time even more support was built into the team’s collective bargaining agreement, including daily travel stipends and paid transportation for children and their caregivers. In the U.S. camp, at least, that has made it easier for the mothers on the team to focus on their jobs.Five mothers, a record for the program, were at the U.S. team’s training camp in April, when highchairs were pulled up to the dining tables and strollers wove paths through the team hotel. At the team’s exhibition matches this spring, the players’ children had their own suite, its door marked with a sign reading, “USA NANNIES.” Inside, the catering included Goldfish crackers and juice boxes.U.S. forward Alex Morgan has made her daughter, Charlie, a fixture at her team’s games.Brad Smith/ISI Photos, via Getty ImagesMixed SupportWhile accommodations for players with children have become more common, the ruthlessness of the sport still comes through sometimes, especially in Europe, where the concept remains relatively new.“Usually, the thinking was that when you were pregnant, your career was over,” Schult told the German outlet Deutsche Welle. “So they were not prepared for having children around.”When Iceland’s Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir took maternity leave from her French team, Olympique Lyonnais, in 2021, the team refused to pay her full salary. So with the help of FIFPro, the global players’ union, she filed a claim with FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, and won a landmark judgment. Gunnarsdottir called it “a wake-up call for clubs.”Sarai Bareman, the head of women’s soccer at FIFA, helped create those new rules, which mandate that clubs grant pregnant players a 14-week maternity leave paid at two-thirds salary and ensure they have a spot on the roster when they return. Now Bareman, a former player, has a young child of her own, a toddler who could be seen running around FIFA’s main hotel in Auckland during the World Cup.Bareman said eight players had registered with FIFA to have their children travel with their teams at the World Cup, and that several others had made private arrangements. The support they receive, and their visibility, was uncommon even a decade ago.“I think it’s very much driven by North America, because we’ve seen some very high-profile returning mothers,” she said. “I honestly feel that has influenced a lot of other female players around the world to be more publicly open about the fact that, yes, they’ve got kids, too. Their kids are there. That’s a massive, massive part of their life.”Morgan had Charlie in 2020, and returned to the sport just in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, often wearing a gold ring with the word “MAMA” that she bought for herself as a reminder of her priorities. Since then, she has regularly included Charlie in her postgame celebrations on the field, carrying her around to see the fans and letting her frolic on the grass. Morgan’s 10.1 million Instagram followers are treated to regular updates on Charlie, including one last week with photos of them after they had been reunited after several weeks apart. “She made it, and my heart is full,” Morgan wrote in the post.No amount of support, though, can ease those separations. One afternoon last week, Morgan excused herself from reporters to say good night to Charlie on a video call. But there was no answer. Charlie had already gone to sleep. “Oh, no,” Morgan said, frowning before she sighed loudly and returned to her interviews.Jessica McDonald brought her son to the 2019 World Cup. She knows other players who left the sport after having to choose between their soccer careers and starting a family. Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesRole ModelsThere was a time, not too long ago, when players tried to play down their motherhood. Jessica McDonald, a member of the United States’ World Cup-winning team in 2019, said that in the many years before she made the national team, she would “walk on eggshells” at her clubs when it came to her son, Jeremiah.“I remember having coaches that said, ‘Oh, are you playing like crap today because your son was up all night?’” she said. “I’m like: ‘First and foremost, my son has got nothing to do with anything that’s happening with me and my career. And how dare you try and rub that in my face?’”It wasn’t until she started playing professionally in North Carolina, where she had an extensive family network to help her, that McDonald decided she and Jeremiah were going to be a package deal. She wasn’t making enough money to afford child care at the time, she said, so she took Jeremiah to practices and set up his stroller on the sideline. When the team took breaks, McDonald would jog over to check on him, or to give him a bottle or change his diaper.When Jeremiah got older, McDonald decided that she no longer cared what coaches thought. She became even more proud of being a mother, she said, delighting in letting Jeremiah run around the field after her games, sometimes in his Batman or Superman costumes. Not every player, she said, found a way to make it work.“There’s a lot of talented women out there who have thrown away their talent to be moms because they didn’t have support from coaches or enough pay,” McDonald said of players in the pro leagues that feed the national team. “And if that didn’t happen, I firmly believe that there would be more moms on the national team right now.”McDonald did not know it at the time, but other players were watching her succeed with Jeremiah at her side, and were inspired by it. Sydney Leroux, a forward who played for the United States when it won the 2015 World Cup, was one of them.Leroux had her first child, a boy named Cassius, 14 months after winning the World Cup. Nearly three years later, in the summer of 2019, she had her second, a daughter named Roux. After rushing back to the field in 93 days — Leroux was counting — she said she was sure she was doing everything to pick up where she left off. Until, that is, the coach of her club team explained to her that the national team was no longer interested in her. Its coaches had moved on, Leroux recalled him telling her, because “you had a bad year.”“How do you even say someone’s had a bad year when they didn’t play one game? I was pregnant,” Leroux said. “It was obviously clear that they didn’t want to go in that direction, and they just used my pregnancy” as an excuse.After a recent practice with her current team, Angel City, Leroux, 33, said she didn’t “care about the national team anymore whatsoever.” She is happier now, she said, because her children have given her more perspective on life.“I feel like I have so much more to give,” she said. “I think playing just because I love it still has been the best thing that I’ve ever done.”Sydney Leroux no longer plays for the U.S. women’s team. But she said her own experience led her to push for higher pay and better support for players with children.Katharine Lotze/Getty Images‘Dream to Do Both’Even after she left the national team, Leroux said, she continued to push for the N.W.S.L. to offer higher pay and better support for players with children, including those who wanted to adopt them, because she understood the struggle: Back then, she said, she was spending more on child care than she was making from her club.Julie Ertz said that she is “indebted to these moms who had little to no resources but wanted to dream to do both,” and the example of players like Leroux and others, including the three mothers who were her teammates at her first World Cup, in 2015, gave her the confidence to believe that she could return to the national team, and to the World Cup, less than a year after Madden was born.But in the months as her body healed and she worked to get back into playing shape, Ertz couldn’t help but wonder if she had set her career on a new course. Was she OK with the possibility that she might drift away from the national team? Or that she might have to retire from soccer altogether if it kept her from being the best mom for Madden that she could be?Those are questions she will continue to wrestle with as she seeks the right balance. Soccer doesn’t define her life, she said, but she admitted that “it has created me.”“I will never be ready to ever say goodbye to the sport,” she said.Crystal Dunn and her son, Marcel.Marlena Sloss for The New York Times More

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      Sophia Smith Has Been Ready for Her World Cup Moment

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      In the weeks before the Women’s World Cup, Sophia Smith admitted that she wanted to be the first United States player to score a goal in the tournament. Of course she did. Like every great athlete, she has long envisioned herself as a star.Growing up in Colorado as the youngest of three girls, Smith spent years trying to keep up with her sporty sisters. She was the sibling relegated to the middle seat of the car, the one who tagged along at basketball practices, the baby yearning to be noticed.Yet even as a young teenager, Smith said, she knew she was destined for something bigger. She told her parents that she had the talent and drive to be a “special” soccer player. Maybe the best ever. It hardly seemed like a long shot: She was not prepared, after all, to settle for anything less.“I’m a winner,” Smith said in an interview before the World Cup. “I have to win. It makes me sick to lose anything. Card game, anything. When it comes to soccer, I just find a way.”On Saturday in the United States’ 3-0 victory over Vietnam, Smith showed — yet again — that there was something to her gut feeling that she would be great.In her first World Cup game, Smith scored the U.S. team’s first goal of the tournament. Then she scored its second. Later, she had the assist on its third. And even then, she thought her day could have been better.“We could have scored several more goals,” Smith said. “Myself included.”It was a remarkable debut, which reinforced the view of many that Smith, 22, could leave Australia and New Zealand as the tournament’s breakout star. In a team filled with promise — eight United States players made their first World Cup appearances against Vietnam — Smith once again hovered high above the rest. Not that her teammates didn’t try to keep up.At times, it seemed as if every player on the U.S. team could have scored a goal or two, or three. Savannah DeMelo, making her first World Cup start and only her second appearance for the national team, had two great early chances. Rose Lavelle — finally back on the field after a long injury layoff — had at least two more after entering as a second-half substitute, including one shot that looked bound for success until it ricocheted off the crossbar.Not even Alex Morgan, the star forward in her fourth World Cup, could match Smith. Morgan missed a penalty kick in first-half injury time when her low shot was stopped by the Vietnam goalkeeper, Thi Kim Tranh Tran.Julie Ertz, left, and Alex Morgan battling Vietnam goalkeeper Thi Kim Thanh Tran.Rafaela Pontes/Associated Press“You know, we can always put more away,” said Morgan, who added that she was happy with the victory but not with her penalty attempt. “But I think the way the first World Cup game goes is not the way the last one is going to go.”U.S. Coach Vlakto Andonovski acknowledged that his team — which is trying to win an unprecedented third consecutive World Cup title — should have converted more of the two-dozen-plus chances it created, and said he would have liked to see more efficiency in those critical moments in front of the goal. The U.S. team has only several days to make those adjustments before it faces a much tougher test against the Netherlands, but Andonovski said that was plenty of time for his players to study what went wrong and to get back to its usual scoring rhythm.The deadline is soon. The Netherlands, a team the U.S. defeated in the 2019 World Cup final, surely won’t allow as many chances, and it surely will make the U.S. work harder on defense.Andonovski had little doubt, though, that the United States would be ready for the match on Thursday (Wednesday night Eastern). He said he was encouraged by how his team played against Vietnam, considering the 11 starters had never played a game together, and six of them — including Smith — had never played a World Cup match at all.“I’m sure the nerves had something to do with it,” he said of the substandard finishing. “So I’m not worried about it.”He added that he was encouraged by the style of soccer that the team played, and pleased with all the opportunities it created. Smith was just as upbeat. Once the team loosens up a bit and gets more touches and strings together more passes, she said, it will “settle down and feel more confident.”She did admit, though, to feeling nervous before the game, a sensation that she said was a first for her.That means she didn’t feel nerves when she helped Stanford win an N.C.A.A. championship in 2019, which included her scoring a hat trick in the semifinal. Or when she entered her first professional game with the Portland Thorns, in 2020, and scored after only three minutes.The World Cup, though, is another level entirely, even against Vietnam. Smith is at a new point in her career now, with new emotions and higher stakes. But ever since she was a kid, she has been ready.“Whoever scores, whatever the score is, a win is a win,” she said in the days before the Vietnam game. “And if it takes me scoring a lot of goals for us to win, I’ll do that.” More

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      Even if U.S. Doesn’t Win the World Cup, Its Players Will Take Home the Most Prize Money

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      The Canadian women’s soccer team has been demanding that its soccer federation agree to equal pay and equal working conditions for the men’s and women’s national teams for over a year. Players from England are frustrated that their country’s federation won’t offer performance-related bonuses. And the Nigerian team discussed boycotting its opening game over money […] More

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      Canada’s Women Pick Up Equal Pay Fight Ahead of Game With U.S.

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      Canada’s team, a Women’s World Cup favorite, went on strike last week as its battle with the country’s soccer federation boiled over.ORLANDO, Fla. — As Canada’s women’s soccer team walked onto the field for a pretournament training session on Wednesday, the vibe was one of just another practice.A few players chatted. Some sang along with the music blaring from a portable speaker. A small group tossed around a football — an American one — and acted out dramatic sideline catches.At a glance, it would have been nearly impossible to tell that the team was opposed to playing at this week’s SheBelieves Cup, which it is. It would have been impossible to know that it did not want to represent the Canadian soccer federation — which it most certainly did not.The players’ red practice jerseys told the other, far more discordant story: In a show of silent but very public protest, the players had turned their shirts inside out. Doing so hid the Canada Soccer logo, and showed the players’ disdain for how they say the federation has treated them during their ongoing equal pay fight.The fight is not new. For more than a year, Canada’s women’s team players have demanded that their federation provide them with equal pay, equal treatment and equal working conditions with Canada’s men’s team. This week, with the players exhausted by months of failed negotiations and outraged by recent budget cuts, the simmering feud boiled over.The players went on strike. The federation responded with threats. Statements were issued. Raw feelings were aired.Labor Organizing and Union DrivesTesla: A group of workers at a Tesla factory in Buffalo have begun a campaign to form the first union at the auto and energy company, which has fiercely resisted efforts to organize its employees.Apple: After a yearlong investigation, the National Labor Relations Board determined that the tech giant’s strictly enforced culture of secrecy interferes with employees’ right to organize.N.Y.C. Nurses’ Strike: Nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai in Manhattan ended a three-day strike after the hospitals agreed to add staffing and improve working conditions.Amazon: A federal labor official rejected the company’s attempt to overturn a union victory at a warehouse on Staten Island, removing a key obstacle to contract negotiations between the union and the company.“We feel as through our federation has let us down,” forward Janine Beckie said.Last week, the Canadian women said, they were dead-set on skipping the SheBelieves Cup, an important warm-up for this summer’s Women’s World Cup, which Canada — the reigning Olympic gold medalist in women’s soccer — will enter as a favorite.When they arrived for the tournament, in which they will play the United States (Thursday), Brazil (Sunday) and Japan (Wednesday), the players said some of those inequities they have become used to were glaring. There were fewer staff members than usual, they said. Fewer players in the camp, and fewer days in the ones to come. So the team refused to take the field.The strike, however, lasted only one day. A meeting with Canada Soccer went poorly; the federation, the team said, threatened to sue the players’ union and individual players for an illegal work stoppage. Saying they could not bear that risk, the players grudgingly returned to work, and committed to taking part in the tournament. It is doing so under protest, players said as they vowed to continue to find ways to amplify the issue with the public.Beckie and Christine Sinclair, the longtime team captain, said they could no longer represent the federation until the federation resolved its disputes with the team. Infuriated after Friday’s meeting with the federation, midfielder Sophie Schmidt said she resolved to retire on the spot, and asked the team’s coach, Bev Priestman, to arrange her flight home. Schmidt decided to stick around until the World Cup only after Sinclair talked her out of leaving.On Thursday night, Canada’s team will take the field knowing it has an ally in its opponent, a United States women’s team, and a blueprint in that team’s successful equal pay fight. The Americans spent years fighting their federation for equal treatment and equal pay, nearly a decade in which they managed court fights and legal filings while winning two World Cup titles. Though the United States team eventually lost its equal pay case in federal court, it emerged last year with a landmark agreement that might be the most player-friendly contract in women’s sports.But none of it was easy, the United States forward Alex Morgan said. Or fast.“Canada’s just getting started,” Morgan said Wednesday. “They know the long road ahead of them because we just went through that and I hope it’s a shorter road for them. We’ll do anything to publicize what they’re fighting for and why they should achieve that.”American stars like Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn said they had spoken with the Canadians and offered advice on strategies to achieve their goals. One key factor, Morgan and the other Americans said, is getting the public and sponsors involved in applying pressure on the federation to make changes.“I think they should use that as something that can be galvanizing and motivating for fans and players alike,” Rapinoe said.Priestman, the Canada coach caught between her players and her employer, said the team did not need any extra motivation. While the labor dispute might be erasing some of their focus heading into three crucial on-field tests, she said, the players are used to fighting for one another.“They’ll be together and make a stand together and they’ll work hard together,” Priestman said. “And I don’t doubt that.”She added, “I see a team fighting for each other, but also fighting for the next generation.”To make the public aware of that fight, the Canadians may wear their shirts inside-out again on Thursday, a public gesture previously employed by the American team during its equal pay fight. Other protests are under discussion, too, though Sinclair and the other team leaders declined to divulge any plans.Whatever they decide, the Americans said they would be proud to join in.“We are in full solidarity with them,” Sauerbrunn said. More

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      U.S. Women Beat Haiti to Open Concacaf W Championship

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      The Americans can qualify for the 2023 Women’s World Cup and the 2024 Olympics by winning a regional championship. Their first step was a win over Haiti.The Women’s World Cup is a year away and the Paris Olympics don’t start for more than two, but both tournaments are the primary focus of the United States women’s national team over the next two weeks.The first goal? Qualify for them. The Americans took their first step on that front Monday night by opening play in the new Concacaf women’s championship with a 3-0 victory over Haiti in Monterrey, Mexico.Alex Morgan scored twice in the first half and Midge Purce added a late clincher in a wild game that involved disallowed goals, a missed penalty and an overturned red card.The revamped eight-team tournament, officially branded the Concacaf W Championship, is serving a dual role — as the qualifying tournament for next summer’s Women’s World Cup and for the 2024 Paris Olympics.Under its new format — a group stage followed by a knockout round — the first task should be a simple one for the Americans: The top two finishers in each four-team group qualify automatically for the Women’s World Cup, where the United States is the two-time defending champion.The latter job may be a little more tricky. Only the champion in Mexico will claim an automatic place in the 2024 Summer Games, while the runner-up and third-place nations will have to contest a Concacaf Olympic playoff in September 2023. That would be a bit more jeopardy than Coach Vlatko Andonovski and his world-beating and well-paid players might want at this current moment in their evolution.Coach Vlatko Andonovski is trying to balance past success with his team’s future.Daniel Becerril/ReutersAndonovski has made no secret that he is managing a team in transition, and that has made these games — every game, really — an important chance for players to impress the coaching staff, and ensure they are in his plans for the next year or more. It is another opportunity for rising players to force their way into the mix, and for veteran players to defend their positions. Not all have succeeded.The future of the U.S. team, regardless of what happens in Mexico, remains a bit of an incomplete picture. Morgan, who scored twice on Monday, and Megan Rapinoe both received their first call-ups to the team since October for the Concacaf event. But Morgan, 33, is already defending her position from rising stars like Catarino Macario, who is currently out with a knee injury. And young forwards like Mallory Pugh, Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman all play the same position as Rapinoe, who turned 37 on Tuesday.“It’s not easy being a forward in the United States right now,” Andonovski said when he announced his roster for the Concacaf championship. “Obviously, it’s great, but it’s not easy because the competition is getting bigger and bigger.”Similar battles are playing out across the field in every position, in every roster decision, as the United States transitions from a roster that led it to two straight World Cup titles to one that might carry it to a third against regional rivals like Canada, the reigning Olympic gold medalist, and European contenders like Sweden, Germany, Spain, the Netherland and England — among others — who are contending the European championship this month.The Americans’ remaining group-stage schedule includes games against Jamaica (on Thursday) and host Mexico (on Monday). Canada leads Group B, which features Trinidad & Tobago, Costa Rica and Panama. The final is July 18.To get there, Andonovski will rely on a blend of the experience, the talent and the generations at his disposal: Of the 23 players on the U.S. roster, seven are in their 30s but eight are 25 or younger. And for now, he has been making no promises to anyone.“It doesn’t mean that all these players that have done well in the past are just going to come back here in the next camp because they’ve done well a year ago or two years ago,” Andonovski said in February, when an earlier roster also omitted several accomplished veterans.“There’s a reason why we’re not calling Mia Hamm or Julie Foudy in camp, right? So the same goes here: They need to perform.” More

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      The League of Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan Deserves Respect

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      Players in the National Women’s Soccer League are demanding the respect all female athletes deserve but rarely get. When will we stop treating women in sports as second-class citizens?That question needs pondering, once again, in light of the horrifying stories of male coaches accused of abusing and harassing players in the National Women’s Soccer League.It turns out that the premier league for women’s soccer in the United States — where stars from the World Cup-winning national team like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan play — treats the legions of less-renowned players like pawns in a male-controlled game of exploitation and moneymaking.Rather than a celebration of female empowerment, revelations in recent days show the league as yet another example of the low regard society holds for female athletes. And in this case, it appears the athletes tolerated and suffered abuse because they feared complaining would doom the only U.S. league they have.“Burn it all down,” Rapinoe said in a tweet.She’s right.This league needs an overhaul in leadership. The change has already begun with the resignation of its commissioner, Lisa Baird. And there is hope that a new generation of female athletes — coming up in this age of reckoning and bold energy among the marginalized, connected to one another and to the world by social media — will not remain quiet.They are no longer afraid of the consequences, no longer shy about speaking truth to power.They have as a North Star the many female gymnasts — including one of the most powerful stars in sports, Simone Biles — who have shown that coming forward and speaking up can bring about change. Doing so can even send perpetrators who once would have continued lurking in the shadows off to prison.This was a turbulent, searingly painful week for women’s sports, but it also pointed the way to the future.Women’s pro soccer players will not continue to accept the status quo.No more tolerating coaches like Richie Burke, the former manager of the Washington Spirit, who unleashed a “torrent of threats, criticism and personal insults” on his players, according to The Washington Post.No more condoning men like Christy Holly, the Racing Louisville coach, fired in August amid a swirl of accusations about the toxic environment he had fostered.No more space for the likes of Farid Benstiti, former coach of the Seattle area’s OL Reign, who we now know was forced to leave after abusive comments.In an investigation published this week by The Athletic, current and former players accused North Carolina Courage manager Paul Riley of emotionally abusing players and coercing them into sex. Though he denied the allegations, Riley was fired by the Courage.The league’s players aren’t buying his denials. They are also disgusted with how the league was less than forthright about the behavior of these coaches. This weekend’s games were canceled when the players rose in unison, demanding reform.“Men, protecting men, who are abusing women,” wrote Rapinoe, the biggest American star in women’s soccer and one of the league’s few household names. “I’ll say it again, men, protecting men, who are ABUSING WOMEN. Burn it all down.”This statement needs some context. Baird, the N.W.S.L. commissioner, resigned on Friday after it became clear that she had done more to protect the men who run the league than the women who put it all on the line in competition.Sometimes it’s not just men protecting men. Sometimes it’s power protecting power.We all know who has the real clout — who stands at the top of the hierarchy. In the N.W.S.L., a vast majority of the team owners who own controlling stakes are men, as are a vast majority of the team executives and coaches.As is true in the rest of society, the sports world rests firmly on a simple, troubling dynamic: Outside of a few exceptions, professional tennis being one, women in sports take a back seat to their male counterparts.They receive far less media coverage, far less corporate backing, and far less love and respect from fans.The W.N.B.A. playoffs are on, full of great story lines and stunning play. As my recent column showed, good luck finding a jersey from your favorite breakout star.And good luck, as well, to the women’s teams who are crisscrossing the country on commercial airlines, scrambling to find flights where they do not have to cram their tired bodies into middle seats.The players in major American men’s sports almost always fly on chartered jets. Female professionals almost never do.The N.W.S.L. is far from a well-established league. Outside of a few cities, particularly Portland, Oregon, where Riley coached for years, its teams struggle for acceptance. The league’s nationally televised 2021 championship game is slated to take place in Portland on Nov. 20, and set to start at 9 a.m. local time. Before one of the biggest games of their lives, the players vying for the title will be waking up in the morning darkness and warming up on a cold field as the sun begins to rise.It isn’t easy to make inroads in the public consciousness in a culture set up so completely to favor men.Still, the N.W.S.L. has lasted longer and forged deeper roots than any American women’s professional soccer league ever has. The league is powerful because of what it represents: a future in which women are taken seriously and treated with full respect.Female athletes are boldly standing up for that kind of transformative change. But this week proves that their battle to be treated equally is far from over. In many ways, it is just beginning. 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      USWNT Falls to Canada, Ending Frustrating Olympic Trip

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      A second-half penalty kick sends Canada to the gold medal game, and leaves the U.S. seeking the bronze, and answers.KASHIMA, Japan — The referee’s whistle had barely finished chirping when the Canadian players sprinted to the middle of the field and unleashed an explosion of exaltation that echoed around an otherwise silent stadium. More