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      The Matildas and the World Cup Crack Australia’s Code Wars

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      The World Cup has added a new dimension to a national sporting conversation often dominated by the rivalry between rugby and Australian rules football.Inside the vast sweep of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, almost nobody was paying attention to what was happening on the field. Those fans who remained in their seats were staring up at the big screens, absorbed by a game a thousand miles away. Many had given up the pretense entirely: They were on the concourse, gathered around any television they could find.The match they had come to watch at the M.C.G. was a significant one. Only a couple of games remained in the regular season of the Australian Football League, and the two teams in attendance, Carlton and Melbourne, were jockeying for position in the playoffs. The stakes were high enough to draw a crowd of almost 70,000 fans.For much of the first quarter, though, the spectators’ eyes and minds were elsewhere: In Brisbane, to be exact, where Australia’s World Cup quarterfinal with France had gone to a penalty kick shootout. The live sporting event playing out in front of them could not compete with the appeal of the Matildas. At this point, very little can.Over the course of the last three weeks, Australia has fallen — and fallen hard — for its women’s soccer team. The whole country seems to be decked out in green and gold. Images of Matildas players beam out from billboards and television screens and the front pages of every newspaper.One paper, The Courier-Mail of Brisbane, was briefly rebranded as The Kerr-ier Mail, in honor of Sam Kerr, Australia’s captain. Anthony Albanese, the prime minister, has expressed support for a national holiday if the team wins the World Cup.“We went out on a team walk in Brisbane before the France game,” defender Clare Hunt said. “And I had a moment where I thought: ‘Oh my God, this is actually happening.’ We were swarmed by the public, and they were chanting for us. We are a little separate from it, but when you’re in packed stadiums, when you see people on the streets, see people investing in women’s soccer, you realize what’s happening.”The Matildas’ games have consistently shattered records for television viewing figures. Their crucial group stage victory against Canada attracted an audience of 4.7 million people, making it the most-watched program of the year on the national Seven Network.The Australia team applauded fans after its quarterfinal win against France on Saturday.Dan Peled/ReutersTheir next game, against Denmark in the round of 16, was watched by a total of about 6.5 million people. It was the biggest television event of the year, on any network, for roughly four days: until the peak audience for Australia-France in the quarterfinals stretched beyond seven million.That figure does not include those who streamed it online or the vast crowds that gathered in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth to watch it en masse. By most estimates, it was the nation’s highest-rated sports event in a decade. The team’s semifinal match with England on Wednesday was cumulatively expected to surpass the 8.8 million who watched Cathy Freeman win gold in the 400 meters at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.The best gauge of how deep the Matildas’ impact runs, though, is in the reaction from Australia’s other major sports. For years, soccer, men’s or women’s, has struggled to compete for both attention and revenue in what is an unusually rich sporting ecosystem, fading in comparison not only to cricket, the national summer game, but to a panoply of winter sports, all of which are known, a little unhelpfully, as “footy.”“For a long time, the country was divided along the Barassi Line,” said Hunter Fujak, a lecturer in sports management at Deakin University. The line, named in tribute to the famed former player, coach and commentator Ron Barassi, is an imaginary, but potent, fissure. It runs from northwest to southeast, splitting Australia’s population, if not its geography, roughly in half.To the west of the line (Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, Tasmania) lies Australian rules football country. East of it (Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra) is rugby territory. The latter comes in two forms: rugby union, comprising teams of 15 players and broadly considered middle class; and rugby league, the more popular and more blue collar version played with teams of 13.Traditionally, relations between those various sports — the so-called football codes — are frosty. They have tended to hover, in fact, somewhere between resolutely competitive and downright hostile, a phenomenon known in Australia as the code wars. The battle is a prominent enough feature of the country’s cultural landscape for Fujak to have used it as the title of a book on the subject.“All of the codes have historically been resistant to each other’s success,” Fujak said. In part, the motivation is just business: Australia may be an immense country, but its population is relatively small.Members of the Freemantle Dockers watching the Women’s World Cup match between Australia and France on the stadium screens before their game in Perth.Paul Kane/Getty ImagesThe A.F.L. and the N.R.L. — the national rugby league tournament — are competing for the same limited number of eyeballs, broadcast deals, commercial revenue and governmental subsidy. The working assumption has always been that one’s rise must come at the expense of the other. “There are only so many people to go around,” Fujak said. “You would expect that of Coke and Pepsi, so why would the sports leagues be any different?”The enmity is so keenly felt, though, because it runs significantly deeper than mere mercantile instinct. “There’s a very strong rivalry at the cultural level,” Fujak said. “At a fan level, the sport you follow is inseparable from identity. For Victorians, being an A.F.L. fan is part of who you are, where you’re from.”In that power struggle, soccer has long been little more than collateral damage. If the A.F.L. and N.R.L. have cast themselves as not just authentically Australian but as a central pillar of a localized identity, soccer has been projected as an often unwelcome import.Though it has always been popular as a participatory sport, the game — as one notorious, offensive mantra put it — was long cast as a lesser form, simultaneously effeminate, foreign and homosexual. Craig Foster, a former Australia player and now a human-rights activist, recently told the BBC that the A.F.L., in particular, has been “antagonistic” toward soccer.That animosity has manifested in both the practical — refusing soccer teams access to its facilities, declining to allow its stadiums to be used as part of Australia’s doomed bid to host the 2022 men’s World Cup — and the petty.It was noted, for example, that the A.F.L. chose to release its schedule for this season at almost the exact minute Australia’s men’s team kicked off against Argentina in the men’s World Cup last year. The A.F.L. has always maintained it was just a quirk of timing.In the weeks leading up to the Women’s World Cup, it appeared little had changed. Though several rugby league stadiums were slated to host matches, the A.F.L. had not been willing to surrender its largest arenas, the M.C.G. and the Sydney Cricket Ground, two of Australia’s best-known venues.That posture, Fujak said, was not unreasonable: FIFA’s rules would have required the A.F.L. to vacate its two major arenas for two months at the very height of the season. “The demands were too onerous,” he said. Still, it did not exactly suggest that Australia’s other sports were about to show the Women’s World Cup, or the Matildas, much hospitality.Australia during the quarterfinals.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/ReutersOver the last few weeks, that concern has been proved demonstrably false. “This is without doubt one of the most exciting times to be an Australian sports fan in the country’s history,” said Andrew Abdo, the N.R.L.’s chief executive. “The Matildas’ performances in the World Cup have made a monumental contribution to the rise of women’s sport in Australia.”In deeds, as much as in words, the A.F.L. has been no less effusive. It has moved kickoff times to accommodate Matildas games. On Saturday, it broadcast the France quarterfinal before, during and after games in Melbourne and Sydney.Matthew Nicks, the head coach of the Adelaide Crows, admitted he would rather “be watching the Matildas” than guiding his team in a game against the Brisbane Lions. He and his counterpart, Chris Fagan, were filmed watching the penalty shootout on a phone when they were supposed to be conducting their postgame media duties.Both codes of football, the commentator George Megalogenis wrote in The Brisbane Times, have been “dreading the moment that soccer holds the nation’s attention, and now that moment is here.” So compelling has the Matildas’ journey been, though, that they have melted away every last vestige of resistance.Foster, the former men’s player, believes that has been rooted more in pragmatism than a fundamental, lasting shift in the way the codes regard each other. The A.F.L. agreed to show the France game in its stadiums because “it was worried nobody would turn up” for the fixtures otherwise, he said.Fujak, too, suggested that willfully ignoring the tournament would have made the A.F.L. look “sulky and negative” at a moment of uplifting national unity. “It’s the most strategically astute sports league in the country,” he said. “It might be cynical, but I think they saw it as the lesser of two evils.”He wondered if the A.F.L. had made something of a calculation. “They’ve always played the long game,” he said. “Soccer has moments of success but, come the end of the tournament, it fades away again.”The risk, this time, is that the effect will be more lasting, that this tournament has on some level reshaped Australia’s entrenched sporting landscape. The code wars may rumble on, in some form, but the Matildas, at least, have risen above them. They have become, in three short weeks, a core part of the country’s identity. More

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      For Sweden, the Right Way to Play Is the One That Wins

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      The World Cup semifinal between Spain and Sweden will be a battle of styles, of passing versus pragmatism. Opponents discount the latter at their peril.Peter Gerhardsson’s plans for Monday evening sounded blissful. He had set some time aside for a swim. He would have a bite to eat, and then retire to his room at Auckland’s palatial Cordis Hotel to listen to some music.He also wanted to make further inroads into “Resonance,” the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s examination of how we interact with the world. Gerhardsson is enjoying it enormously; his readiness to discuss it makes that abundantly clear. He figured he could fit all of that in and still be in bed by 9 p.m. He does have a World Cup semifinal to coach on Tuesday, after all.Should that last prospect have been causing Gerhardsson, the manager of Sweden’s women’s soccer team, any sort of stress or strain as he addressed the news media a day before his team plays Spain at Eden Park, he hid it extremely well.He has, after all, been here before: This is his fourth major tournament in charge of his homeland, and it is the fourth time he has made the semifinals. Sweden finished third in the 2019 World Cup, won the silver medal in the 2020 Olympics, and then reached the last four at last summer’s European Championship. By this stage, it is familiar ground.He was relaxed enough, then, not only to discuss his reading material but the philosophical imprint of Johan Cruyff; the art of scrapbooking; and his longstanding — if, being completely honest, slightly dwindling — tradition of calling his mother before games to solicit her advice. (He does not do it quite so often now, he said, because he is “old enough to make my own decisions.” Gerhardsson is 63.)Sweden Coach Peter Gerhardsson bristles at criticism that his team’s mix of set pieces and defense isn’t aesthetically pleasing. “It is good football for me.”Hannah Mckay/ReutersOnly once did he betray even the merest hint of irritation: at the lingering perception that Sweden’s progress to the semifinals past both the United States, the reigning champion, and a widely admired Japan side has come in a fashion that might not be described as aesthetically pleasing.Sweden’s leading goal scorer, for example, is Amanda Ilestedt, a central defender who would not have been regarded before the tournament as an obvious contender to win the World Cup’s Golden Ball. “Nobody was expecting her to do that,” her teammate Fridolina Rolfo said.Ilestedt, though, has now plundered four goals — a tally bettered in the tournament only by Japan’s Hinata Miyazawa — all from set pieces, either at the first or second remove. She has proved particularly adept at emerging victorious when the ball is ricocheting around the penalty area in the aftermath of a corner or free kick. Or, in Gerhardsson’s rather more poetic rendering, “picking up the fruit when it has fallen from the tree.”That, in part, illustrates why Sweden has proved such a magnet for euphemism. Gerhardsson’s team has variously but consistently been described throughout this tournament as “direct,” or “effective,” or “physical.” Jorge Vilda, the Spanish coach, added “strong” to that list.All of these words mean the same thing: Sweden is a set-piece team, a long-ball team, a percentages team. The allegation is unspoken, but it is loud, and it is clear: Sweden might be winning, but it is doing it in a manner that is — on some moral or spiritual or philosophical level — wrong.Somewhere beneath his placid surface, that suggestion clearly irks Gerhardsson. “One of our strengths is set pieces,” he said Monday. “Both in the offense and in the defense.” He became just a little more animated. “It is not just a strength: We have players who are very technically skilled at it. We practice a lot.”It is not all they are, he said, noting, “It is just one way for us to win games.” But even if it was, would that really be such a problem? Gerhardsson wanted to make this point very clearly: Set pieces, he said, “are part of the game.”They are, of course. His logic is impeccable. His job, and that of his players, is to win soccer matches. It is not to win in any particular style. No one type of play that achieves that goal is more virtuous than any other. Besides, aesthetics are subjective: Gerhardsson, for what it is worth, likes Sweden’s mixture of high pressure and dogged, intense marking. “It is good football for me,” he said.Sweden has eliminated two former champions, the United States and Japan, and stands two wins from its first Women’s World Cup title.Scott Barbour/Associated PressThe faint disregard for Sweden, instead, says more about soccer’s fashions than it does about the inherent worth of the team. Unlike its opponent on Tuesday, Spain, Sweden does not claim to espouse or symbolize any particular philosophy. It is concerned less with how the game as a whole should be played and more with how any individual match might be won.If it has an identity, indeed, it is a reactive one. “We are very good at adapting,” the midfielder and captain Kosovare Asllani said. “We have a very good team around the team. They do a lot of work for us to prepare the tactics to face any team in the tournament. We have different ways to face different games. They allow us to be fully prepared for anyone.”That flexibility meant the Swedes could not be physically intimidated by the United States and could not be undone by Japan’s slick, inventive counterpunches. They might have required a penalty shootout, settled only by the narrowest margin imaginable, to overcome the U.S., but against Japan they were in a position to grind their opponent down. Ilestedt opened the scoring from a corner. Filippa Angeldal settled the game with a penalty.It was put to Gerhardsson that Spain might best be thought of as a combination of those two opponents: just as strong, just as imposing as the U.S., but no less technically gifted than Japan. He agreed. Spain is a wonderful team, he said. He has always been a Cruyffian at heart, an admirer of the intricate, technical soccer that Spain has come to represent.He did not sound intimidated. He did not sound troubled at all, in fact. The thrust of the book by Rosa on his night table, as Gerhardsson explains it, is that we — as humans — are not good at accepting that we do not know what is going to happen. To him, that has always been the beauty of soccer: It is unpredictable.An unheralded Sweden team might get past the United States and Japan. It might run into Spain, long hailed as women’s soccer’s coming force, and be expected to be swept aside by its sheer philosophical purity. Or it might turn out differently. “Maybe they are the perfect opponents for us,” Gerhardsson said of Spain. He does not know. He is OK with that. He is, in fact, entirely relaxed about it. More

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      England, Bruised but Unbowed, Reaches World Cup Semifinals

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      The Lionesses, champions of Europe, rallied past Colombia but now face yet another hurdle: a semifinal with host Australia on Wednesday.England entered the World Cup knockout stages still waiting to look like the dominant team it had hoped it could be. Sure, England had yet to lose a game — an accomplishment during this chaotic tournament — but so far its performances had seemed a few rungs short of the level required to accomplish its goals: to reach its first final, to lift the World Cup trophy for the first time.England had arrived in Australia last month without three of the country’s best players, all ruled out because of serious knee injuries. Another starter was hurt in the group stage and missed a game and a half. Then the Lionesses lost their best offensive player at this World Cup, the young midfielder Lauren James, to a suspension after she stamped on a Nigerian player in the round of 16.But on Saturday night, in front of a Sydney crowd that presented yet another hurdle by favoring the upstart Colombians as the host nation’s preferred next opponent, England found a way forward again.Overcoming an early goal with one of their own just before halftime and a second midway through the second half, the Lionesses delivered the kind of performance they had been saying was just around the corner, beating Colombia, 2-1, to advance to the semifinals for the second straight World Cup.There, England will face Australia, which hours earlier had claimed its place by winning an extended penalty shootout against France up the coast in Brisbane.“We have been put up against a lot this tournament,” said forward Alessia Russo, “and we always find a way through.”Russo scored the winner in the 63rd minute, a right-footed finish after an assist from midfielder Georgia Stanway and a momentary lapse by Colombia’s defense that sent her in alone. Her coach and teammates used the word “clinical” to describe both Russo’s shot and the team’s focus, refusing to panic despite falling behind.England’s Lauren Hemp challenging for a ball in midfield.Mark Baker/Associated PressThe stands were late to fill up at the start of the match, as many of the spectators appeared to be lingering outside, part of a raucous crowd in Cathy Freeman Park watching Australia edge France on an outdoor viewing screen. But when they did, it was clear the crowd favored the Colombians, who entered, against all odds, as the last team from the Americas still standing.Those supporters erupted when Colombia midfielder Leicy Santos opened the scoring from the right side of the penalty area in the 44th minute, her shot arcing just over the outstretched right glove of England goalkeeper Mary Earps, who had surrendered only one other goal all tournament.Surprised by the goal, England was reminded by its captain, Millie Bright, to stick to its game plan, to trust that its chances would come, too. Lauren Hemp provided the evidence almost immediately, tying the score only seconds before halftime by pouncing on a free rebound after Colombia’s goalkeeper fumbled the ball just steps from her goal line.England, the reigning European champion and a World Cup semifinalist four years ago in France, entered this tournament as a top contender but a wounded one, having lost forward Beth Mead, midfielder Fran Kirby and defender Leah Williamson to serious knee injuries in the months before the World Cup. The depth that had delivered a title at last summer’s Euros offered a measure of comfort for Coach Sarina Wiegman and her team, but a lack of goals that had marked the team’s run-up to the tournament showed no sign of abating once it began.Apart from a 6-1 win against China in the group stage, England had struggled to score, relying instead on Earps and a veteran defense. England produced single goals in its other two wins in the group stage, against Haiti and Denmark, and none at all in its round-of-16 win over Nigeria, which was only settled in a penalty-kick shootout after 120 scoreless minutes.Two goals against Colombia will not answer all of those questions for England, but the Lionesses turned in a far stronger showing than they had in the previous round. For one day at least, that counted as a positive.“You want to get better as the tournament goes, and I think we did just that tonight,” forward Chloe Kelly said.England will face an even taller task in the next round against Australia in front of another crowd even more eager to see it defeated. It will again be without James, whose two-game ban means she will miss the semifinal, too. But for Wiegman, neither the fans nor the stakes will be England’s biggest challenge.“No, it’s the opponent,” Wiegman said. “And ourselves.” More

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      Australia Beats France on Penalties to Reach World Cup Semifinals

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      Australia needed 10 rounds of penalty kicks to confirm its place in the team’s first semifinal, and extend its country’s wild ride.By the time it was over, the overriding feeling at the Brisbane Stadium was not so much euphoria or ecstasy or relief but dizziness. Not from the heights that Australia has reached in its home World Cup, beating France to reach a first semifinal, but from the winding, coiling, nauseating road it took to get there.The game itself was fraught enough, the goal-less stalemate of the score line belying more than two hours in which the balance of power hopped back and forth: France started well, composed and inventive, only for Australia to wrestle control. It was not an evening defined by patterns of play so much as storm surges, and the ability to withstand them.The 120 minutes of play before the penalty kicks were defined by each team fighting for control and withstanding pressure.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe penalty shootout that decided it, though, was something else entirely. France missed its first kick, with Australia goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold denying Selma Bacha. Solène Durand, the substitute goalkeeper brought on by France as a penalty specialist — or, who knows, perhaps just a piece of psychological warfare — saved a shot from Steph Catley.Ève Périsset, introduced specifically to take a penalty, missed France’s fifth; Arnold, the goalkeeper, stepped up to win it. She stepped up confidently. Durand did not move. The crowd started to celebrate. Her teammates accelerated toward her. Her attempt struck the right post. Australia would have to wait.Each team had taken eight penalties by the time Arnold saved another, this time from Kenza Dali. The goalkeeper had, though, stepped forward too soon. It had to be taken again. Dali chose the same side of the goal, a double bluff. Arnold called it. She saved it again. Clare Hunt stepped up to win it for Australia. By that stage, it was hardly even a surprise that she could not convert.Instead, it would be Cortnee Vine who decided it. Vicki Bècho was the last French outfield player set to take a penalty; after her, Durand would have had to take her turn. But Bècho struck the post, and with a nation watching, Vine kept her composure, and Australia had survived, 7-6, in the shootout. The thunderclap that followed was tinged with just a hint of desperation, the energy ever-so-slightly frantic.Mackenzie Arnold saves a penalty from Kenza Dali.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCortnee Vine, a substitute, scoring the winning goal for Australia.Justin Setterfield/Getty ImagesFrance’s captain, Wendie Renard, consoling Vicki Bècho, who hit the post.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAustralia has, over these last three weeks, embraced this team in a way that has been simultaneously predictable — this is an enormous sporting nation, one that draws a considerable proportion of its identity from its prowess in the various sports it takes to heart — and wholly surprising to those who have witnessed soccer’s struggles for acceptance.It is not just that the stadiums have been full: The World Cup is an event, a showpiece, a good day out, and almost every country on the planet is united in enjoying the sensation of being part of a major event. It is that the streets are full of green-and-gold, that the newspapers have images of the Matildas front and center, that it is the primary topic of discussion.The fact Australia’s progress has continued will only exacerbate that, of course, now that the country is only two games from a world championship. It is the nature of it, though, that is perhaps the best advertisement for soccer’s curious charms.For three hours, nobody in the Brisbane Stadium could tear their eyes away, nobody could take anything for granted. As they walked away, they would have felt not only delighted and proud but nauseous and drained, too, their nerves frayed and torn by what they had been through. And that, after all, is the point of sport. It is what will draw them back in four days, when a semifinal, and the chance to live it all again, hovers on the horizon. More

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      Sweden Beats Japan to Reach Women’s World Cup Semifinals

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      Sweden followed up its elimination of the United States by holding off Japan, the last former winner in the field.A Women’s World Cup of change, of unexpected early departures and tantalizing arrivals, has completed its upending of certainty and tradition.No former champion remains in the tournament with two rounds to play.Gone prematurely are the United States, with its four world championships, and Germany, with two. Ousted is Norway, the 1995 victor. And now Japan, the 2011 winner, has exited in the quarterfinals with a 2-1 defeat to Sweden on Friday in Auckland, New Zealand.Of course, it would be highly inaccurate to consider Sweden an arriviste. It has participated in all nine Women’s World Cups, finishing second in 2003 and third three times. But it has never won a major tournament and longs to be a first-time champion.Sweden will face Spain in the semifinals after smothering Japan’s versatile attack in the first half and then defending for its tournament life in the second. It built what seemed a secure lead early in the second half by scoring twice indirectly on its specialty, set pieces, then held on as Japan, desperate and energized, made a fierce, if futile, charge.Defender Amanda Ilestedt opened the scoring for Sweden. It was her fourth goal of the tournament.Saeed Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJapan, which had scored 14 goals in its first four matches and seemed a decent pick as the best team left in the tournament, did not manage a shot in the first half. It awakened as the exit door loomed, creating furious chances in the second half. But it will long regret a missed penalty kick in the 75th minute.“We fought so hard because we wanted it,” Japan’s captain, Saki Kumagai, said through tears. “We want to go to the next round, of course.”Sweden’s victory, Spain’s first trip to the semifinals and Japan’s exit seemed in keeping with the spirit of a World Cup with the tournament’s biggest-ever field, the highest attendance at this stage and the most receptive embrace of the newly risen and revealing ambitions of teams like Colombia, Jamaica, Nigeria, South Africa and Morocco.Finally, FIFA can begin to say with some legitimacy that the Women’s World Cup offers an event of global, not merely regional or entrenched, possibility. The other side of the draw is a similar reflection of that growth: Australia will face France, and England, the reigning European champion, will play Colombia.Honoka Hayashi pounced on a loose ball and beat Sweden goalkeeper Zecira Musovic, but Japan was left to rue other missed chances.Phil Walter/Getty ImagesOn Friday, Sweden pressed high through the first half to suffocate Japan’s attacks. But when it possessed the ball, Sweden was patient, using short passes to maintain possession and looking for a long ball to take advantage of its height and aerial skills.In the 32nd minute, Sweden’s set-piece mastery delivered a scrappy goal. Six of its 11 goals in the tournament have come directly or indirectly from set pieces — four from corner kicks. This time, midfielder Kosovare Asllani’s free kick rattled around in the penalty area, and the defender Magdalena Eriksson kept the play alive with three jabs at the ball. Finally, it fell to her fellow center back, Amanda Ilestedt, who scored from just inside the six-yard box.“I thought, ‘I’m just going to put it away now,’” Ilestedt said. “So that was a great feeling.”Even before that, however, Sweden had set a physical tone against the smaller, younger Japanese players.“They hadn’t played, like, a physical team until they played us,” said the Swedish substitute Sofia Jakobsson, who plays for the San Diego Wave in the National Women’s Soccer League. “We are bigger than them and could go into harder tackles.”Riko Ueki sent her penalty kick off the crossbar, one of several narrow misses by Japan in the second half.Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesAs the second half opened, Japan’s goalkeeper, Ayaka Yamashita, pushed a shot just wide from the charging Johanna Kaneryd, giving Sweden a corner kick. Fuka Nagano handled the ball as the corner sailed into the crowd in front of Japan’s goal, and after a video review, Sweden was awarded a penalty kick. Filippa Angeldal slotted the ball low and to the left, giving Sweden a 2-0 lead.It was not a safe one.“Something happened,” Jakobsson said. “I don’t know if they were growing into the game or we were becoming more tired.”After playing more defensive-minded in the first half, Japan’s attack was energized by the substitute Jun Endo. Sweden had expected a vigorous comeback, with Eriksson warning before that match that Japan’s attack could “come from anywhere and they will never stop.” Her comment proved prophetic.Hana Takahashi and Japan mounted a furious push in the final 20 minutes.Andrew Cornaga/Associated PressIn the 75th minute, Japan won a penalty kick when the substitute forward Riko Ueki had her heel clipped by Sweden’s Madelen Janogy. But Ueki’s shot clanged off the crossbar, and her header on the rebound looped high over the goal.It was suggested afterward to Sweden’s left back, Jonna Andersson, that her team was living a charmed existence in the knockout rounds, having survived a penalty shootout only five days earlier to eliminate the United States.Andersson smiled and said she preferred to believe it was the imposing presence of Sweden’s superb goalkeeper, Zecira Musovic, not luck, that had made the difference again, at least on Ueki’s attempt. “Maybe it’s a good goalkeeper that takes some energy or disturbs the penalty taker,” Andersson said.In the 87th minute, Japan finally scored on a rebound by Honoka Hayashi after a failed clearance by Sweden gifted her an easy shot at Musovic. But not even 10 minutes of added time were enough to find a tying goal.Japan was gone. And a first-time Women’s World Cup champion waits its crowning moment.“I think we have the team to go all the way,” Andersson said. “And now we are one step closer.” More

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      Spain Beats Netherlands to Reach First World Cup Semifinal

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      Salma Paralluelo’s goal in extra time delivered a victory over the Netherlands and a date with Sweden.Salma Paralluelo might not have chosen soccer. It was not her only option, certainly. A 19-year-old Spain striker, Paralluelo was a bright prospect in track and field, too, such a gifted runner that she might even have represented her country at the Tokyo Olympics two years ago. Her chosen discipline was the 400 meters. She still holds the national under-20 record at the distance.She is also, it turns out, just the person her country needed at the end of a marathon.Spain’s meeting with the Netherlands on Friday in the quarterfinals of this Women’s World Cup was always likely to be close. As Spain’s draining, narrow, 2-1 victory proved, close may have been an understatement. There is barely a hair’s breadth between these teams: the Spanish, Europe’s great power-in-waiting, and the Dutch, famed for their talent but noteworthy for their resilience.Four years ago, that mixture was enough to carry the Netherlands to the World Cup final against the United States. This year, it was starting to look as if a repeat trip might be in the cards. Andries Jonker’s team had advanced from the group phase in a style more impressive than spectacular. It had finished, most significantly, ahead of the United States. Thanks to the reflexes and concentration of Daphne van Domselaar, its goalkeeper, it had held South Africa at bay in the round of 16.The Netherlands might have been missing its cutting edge — the star striker Vivianne Miedema is one of the many players absent from this World Cup because of a serious knee injury — but it had found a way to make up for that by dulling everyone else’s. The squad’s confidence was growing sufficiently that forward Lineth Beerensteyn could even afford to take a little swipe at the United States team when she met with reporters before the game. There had, Beerensteyn said, been too much talk from the Americans, who lost to Sweden in the round of 16. “You have to do it on the pitch,” she said.For a while, it seemed as if she would be good to her word. In the bright winter sunshine of Wellington, New Zealand, Spain dominated possession, because Spain always dominates possession. Spain created chances, too, because Spain always creates chances.Spain hit the post twice in a matter of seconds.Amanda Perobelli/ReutersBut it could not breach the Dutch. Whenever it picked its way through the massed ranks of the defense, Spain found van Domselaar, as indomitable as ever, repelling whatever it could muster.And when van Domselaar was beaten, Spain found that the physical infrastructure of the stadium was choosing sides: Midway through the first half, Alba Redondo hit the post twice in a matter of seconds. A few minutes later, Esther González had a goal ruled out for offside, though only after the referee, Stéphanie Frappart, had consulted a video replay.It was that sort of game: one of slender differences and considerable what-ifs. For Spain — what if Redondo had scored, or if Frappart had noticed that Stefanie van der Gragt had handled the ball in the scramble to clear it; or if González had delayed her run a fraction of a second? But, more than anything, it was for the Netherlands.What if the penalty won by Beerensteyn for what seemed a clear push from Spain defender Irene Paredes had not been overturned? The Netherlands might have led, rather than finding itself, barely a heartbeat later, falling behind after Mariona Caldentey converted the only penalty of three that should, or could, have been awarded.Jackie Groenen and the Netherlands turned in a relentless defensive effort.Grant Down/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd what if Beerensteyn had scored any one of the three clear-cut opportunities that fell her way as the game entered its dying embers? The Dutch had at least taken the game the distance, van der Gragt salving her conscience after her hand ball led to Caldentey’s penalty by unceremoniously drilling home an equalizing goal as the game ticked into injury time.Beerensteyn twice might have won it, might have kept the Dutch in the tournament, but she could convert neither chance.Paralluelo was more efficient. She picked up the ball from Jenni Hermoso, shimmied her hip and dropped her shoulder and burst clear into the Dutch penalty area, moving too quickly and too easily for the straining Dutch defense. She steadied herself and swept a shot, low and left-footed, past van Domselaar.The Netherlands’ race is run. Spain’s might just be picking up speed. More

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      A Premier League Love Story Has Heartbreak Ahead

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      Luton Town’s rise to the world’s richest soccer league proves England’s fabled merit system still works. What happens next may show that it does not.Within a few days of Luton Town’s promotion to the Premier League in May, the construction crews were moving in and the scaffolding was going up at its stadium, Kenilworth Road. The club’s first home game in English soccer’s top flight since its money-spinning, supercharged rebrand into the richest, most popular league in the world was not quite three months away. There was an alarming amount of work to do, and not nearly enough time to do it.Luton’s stadium has for some time been something of a throwback in English soccer: defiantly cramped, unapologetically tumbledown, the kind of careworn, hostile, raw sort of place most teams have long since left behind in favor of something more modern, more comfortable, possibly just a little bland.Kenilworth Road, though, was both a point of difference and a point of pride, a feature the club had come to regard as a source of strength, rather than weakness.“I don’t think anyone likes coming to the Kenny,” defender Amari’i Bell said last season, using the ground’s affectionate nickname. “When we played Chelsea, I don’t think they enjoyed it. If you come here and you’re not in the right frame of mind, you can’t wait to leave.”The Premier League, though, has commanded that the club dull the edge of that secret weapon, just a little. It has an image to maintain, after all, and that means ensuring all of its stadiums meet certain criteria.Luton’s stadium is tucked so tightly into its neighborhood that one entrance cuts through a row of homes.Carl Recine/ReutersUnsurprisingly, Kenilworth Road did not, and so Luton had to make the first substantive changes to the stadium in years. The work proved so extensive, in fact, that the team requested that its first home game — scheduled for a week from Saturday — be postponed because it couldn’t guarantee the most critical renovations would be completed in time.There were new floodlights to install, old ones to improve. It needed a room for news conferences with seating for 100 journalists, positions for 50 television and data-analysis cameras, and studio space for the league’s broadcasters. The gantry, the high perch where play-by-play commentators call matches, had to be removed, clad in nonflammable material, and reinstalled.One particular edict was relaxed — Luton will not start the season with undersoil heating installed beneath the field — but the preparations were still a colossal undertaking. Gary Sweet, the club’s chief executive, estimated that the cost had amounted to $15 million and rising, but Luton had little choice. The rules change when you make the Premier League.Luton’s arrival in the richest league in the world, 30 years after it last appeared in the top flight, is the culmination to the sort of fairy tale that is central to English soccer’s self-identity. It has been only a decade since Luton was marooned in the sixth tier, mixing with part-time opponents, after spending years sailing closer and closer to oblivion.Now here it is, awaiting Manchester City and Manchester United and Arsenal, in the promised land. One of its players, Pelly Ruddock Mpanzu, has been present every step of the way; he will become the first player in history to feature for the same team in each of England’s top five divisions. Its chief executive, Sweet, is a lifelong fan.The club has said it will pour its Premier League payday into the club’s infrastructure.Carl Recine/ReutersHigh on the list of improvements needed to meet Premier League standards: new floodlights.Lee Smith/Action Images, via ReutersIt is the kind of story that defines England’s romantic vision of its national game, living and breathing proof of the power of its fabled pyramid, the porous superstructure that bonds the Premier League not only to the Football League, which manages the divisions just below it, but to everything below the professional levels of the sport: the National League, the Northern Premier League, the United Counties League.The pyramid is supposed to be a model of social mobility, a pathway from the gutter to the stars. Luton is a case study in its continuing viability. It has made it, and in doing so it has demonstrated that every club — every player — has the right to dream, no matter where they might currently find themselves. Luton shows that anything is possible.Until a certain point. Luton’s prize for promotion was, as is the case for every team to pass through the gilded doors of the world’s most lucrative domestic competition, almost unbelievably rich. The club will earn a minimum of $215 million even if it remains in the Premier League for only a single season. For Luton, that money is transformative.The club plans, for example, to use a considerable proportion of it to finance a new stadium. Luton might love Kenilworth Road, might cherish its ragged edges, but it has long known it requires a new home if it is to have a stable future. A quarter of its Premier League income has been earmarked for that project, Sweet has said.“We are consummate long-term planners,” he said. “We look at planning for the club five or 10 years ahead, actually, rather than five or 10 minutes, which a lot of people do. That’s the golden rule of what our success will be: having a sensible, long-term, financial, strategic plan.” Luton sees its time in the Premier League as a way to “build the foundations for the future.”Victory in last season’s Championship playoff final sent Manager Rob Edwards and Luton Town to the Premier League. Staying there will be something else altogether.Matthew Childs/Action Images Via ReutersIt is hard to refute the idea that this is precisely where any team’s priorities should lie, certainly those outside of the game’s elite, a subset now grown so fat that it is effectively too big to fail.After all, it is another central tenet of English soccer that clubs are not just businesses but social institutions, operated by boards and chief executives and suits of variable origin and quality but owned — on a spiritual level, if not a legal one — by the fans. Their primary interest is, or at least should be, existential: always having a club to support.The problem is that spending money on infrastructure means not spending it on players. This has been another summer of excess for the majority of the teams in the Premier League, where the scale of the spending has at times bordered on the irrational, almost wanton.Declan Rice is now the most expensive English player in history. Manchester City, which won the treble last season with five elite central defenders, added a sixth, Josko Gvardiol, for more than $100 million. Manchester United spent just as much on Rasmus Hojlund, a Danish striker with a grand total of 27 career goals. Liverpool has committed $110 million to two midfielders, and its owners are currently being accused of modern soccer’s greatest sin: parsimony.Luton, by contrast, has performed the sporting equivalent of winning the lottery and immediately investing its winnings in low-yield, long-term bonds. It is not that the club has not spent. By its modest standards, it has: Seven new players have arrived, at a total cost of $20 million or so. Sweet has been at pains to point out that two of those fees have been club records.The emphasis, though, has been on using the Premier League windfall as judiciously, as prudently, as possible, not sacrificing tomorrow for fleeting satisfaction today. The budget, Sweet has conceded, has been “somewhat restricted” by that choice, but the club does not believe such an approach automatically leads to failure.Weeds grew on the steps inside Kenilworth Road this summer.Carl Recine/ReutersWith work on the stadium still not complete, Luton postponed its first home game.Carl Recine/Reuters“We can be competitive,” he said. “We firmly believe that if a group of players are good enough to get you there, they’re generally good enough to keep you there.”That is not quite how it has been received by the Premier League’s never-knowingly underemployed commentariat. Common consensus has it that Luton has effectively doomed itself to relegation — “100 percent,” one former player suggested on the talkSport radio station — by refusing to invest sufficiently, or even suitably, in its squad. Others have suggested that the club’s caution betrays a lack of ambition.It is here, of course, that the reverence for the pyramid begins to look a little like a comforting delusion. There is, indeed, a common thread that binds the game’s lower reaches to the foothills of the Premier League, and a communal romance in witnessing a team traverse it. That ends as soon as the final step is taken. The promised land, it turns out, is all business. The rules change when you make it to the Premier League.Luton can take its place among the elite, but it can never truly belong there, not unless it is prepared to risk its future in favor of its present. It might survive for a season, maybe two, standing by not only its players but its methods, investing in its infrastructure, acting as it should, but at some point it will be caught by sheer, brutal economic reality.As Luton will soon discover, climb high enough, and the nature of the pyramid comes into focus: The sides are not so much steep as sheer cliffs, and off in the distance, the capstone has detached itself completely, separated from the rest of the game by thin air, a gulf that cannot be crossed.Neil Hall/EPA, via Shutterstock More

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      England’s Lauren James Gets 2-Game Ban at Women’s World Cup

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      The LatestLauren James, a top player for England in the Women’s World Cup, was given a two-game suspension by FIFA, soccer’s governing body, for stepping on the back of an opposing player in her team’s round-of-16 win against Nigeria on Monday in Brisbane, Australia. If she does return in this tournament, it will be in the final.James received a red card near the end of regulation time because she stamped on the back of Michelle Alozie as Alozie was getting up from a foul. England went on to win on penalties after 120 minutes with no goals.The red card meant that James was automatically suspended for England’s quarterfinal game on Saturday against Colombia. But FIFA’s disciplinary committee, it was announced Thursday, added an additional game because her violation was for violent conduct.“The suspension will be served for the FIFA Women’s World Cup quarterfinal and the next international fixture following that,” FIFA said in a statement.Lauren James has apologized for stepping on Nigeria defender Michelle Alozie in Monday’s game.Patrick Hamilton/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhy It Matters: James has been one of England’s top players.James, with three goals in this tournament, had been England’s most exciting player. She had accounted for five goals in a win over China in the group stage, with three assists, two goals and a potential third called back because one of her teammates was offside.England is one of the top teams remaining, especially after the eliminations of the United States and Germany, and James’s presence helped the Lionesses overcome injuries to other key players.Background: The violation came near the end of a physical game.England’s game against Nigeria was a tough, back-and-forth contest in which Nigeria was playing aggressively and England seemed to be holding on. Nigeria, having seen James’s success in the tournament, kept a defender on her as much as possible. As a result, James touched the ball less often than she wanted to.Alozie acknowledged the game’s intensity in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “This game is one of passion, insurmountable emotions, and moments,” she wrote. “All respect for Lauren James.”James responded with an apology: “I am sorry for what happened.”What’s Next: England faces Colombia in a quarterfinal on Saturday.James can return for the World Cup final if England can win two games without her. Its next game is a quarterfinal against Colombia, which has another big star in 18-year-old Linda Caicedo. The winner of that game is scheduled to play a semifinal on Wednesday against the winner of the quarterfinal between France and Australia.The final of the tournament is Aug. 20. More