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      Inside U.S. Team, a Campaign to Avert Disaster Gets Personal

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      Blocking out criticism they call “noise,” Lindsey Horan and other veterans are taking a one-on-one approach to turning around their World Cup fortunes.In the days since the United States team narrowly avoided an embarrassing early elimination from the Women’s World Cup, Lindsey Horan, its co-captain, has been working the room.Horan wants a word, with many of the team’s veterans but especially the 14 World Cup rookies. So she has been tapping teammates on their shoulders and knocking on their hotel room doors and pulling them aside in training. Hey, she might say, can we chat for a few minutes?The message Horan has taken to every player in the dressing room is a simple one. Ignore “the noise” from critics of the team’s play. Embrace the high expectations that shadow the U.S. team. Remember why you started playing this game in the first place.“Find the joy,” Horan says, and the team will find its way.Perhaps as much as any U.S. player, Horan, who was named co-captain less than a month ago, has shouldered the burden of its uneven performances at this World Cup. Much has gone wrong, she admitted on Thursday, days before the United States will face Sweden in a round-of-16 match in Melbourne that will end the World Cup for one of them. But she has seen good things, too. And she has seen enough to know it can all snap back into place quickly. Because it has before.“Once we get a little bit more of that joy back and, you know, that feeling, things are going to move a bit better on the field,” Horan said. “We’re going to have more rhythm; we’re going to have more confidence.”Joy has been in short supply the last two weeks. The U.S. team came into the World Cup as the favorite to win it, but it is far from living up to its potential. The team lacks chemistry, despite its repeated claims to possess it in abundance. It has struggled to score goals, producing only four in three matches. Game after game, it has looked disorganized, or frustrated, or on its heels. In many ways, it has been the worst showing of the United States ever at this tournament. And it can still get worse.Everyone — those on the outside and the players and coaches inside the team’s bubble — knows what’s at stake for the U.S. team as it prepares to play Sweden. Its reputation as the best women’s soccer program in history, a four-time World Cup champion, a team that has never been knocked out of the tournament before the semifinals, hangs in the balance.In this edition of the World Cup, the United States has looked anything but invincible. And in Sweden it is facing a team that knows it as well as any other. The teams have met six times at the World Cup, and in every edition since 2007. The U.S. holds the upper hand in those meetings, having lost only one of them, but Sweden has its victories, too: It eliminated the United States in the quarterfinals at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and then humbled it again at the Tokyo Games in 2021.Now Sweden has breezed through the group stage, winning all three of its games and outscoring its opponents by 9-1. It is dangerous and also well-rested going into Sunday’s match, having benched a half dozen regulars in its final group game against Argentina.The U.S., meanwhile, will be without its midfield engine Rose Lavelle, who is suspended after receiving two yellow cards in the group stage. And it has been buffeted by critics, including a few it knows well. Tobin Heath, a World Cup winner in 2015 and 2019, suggested on her new podcast that the team had become tactically isolated, and perhaps a little naïve. Carli Lloyd, the former star U.S. midfielder who is working as a television analyst for the tournament, tore into the team, saying it had lost its passion and appeared to be taking its past success for granted. Opponents, she said, had lost their fear of the Americans because they could see the team’s “arrogance.”Horan bristled at that remark. “For anyone to question our mentality, you know, hurts a little bit,” she said. “But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t really care.”Instead, Horan, 29, said she and several of the team’s most experienced players have taken it upon themselves to try to close ranks, and to persuade their teammates to start to believe in themselves again.After the Portugal game ended in a 0-0 draw, Kelley O’Hara, a defender competing in her fourth World Cup, leaned into the team’s huddle to deliver a forceful speech about drawing a line under the group stage and seeing how the knockouts offered a fresh start.Then she stood on the field side-by-side with Trinity Rodman, the young forward, while gesturing to spots on the field in an impromptu coaching session. Megan Rapinoe, another longtime veteran now relegated to a substitute’s role, has pulled teammates aside at halftime of matches and in training and in the hotel to share what she is seeing, to offer her experiences as counsel. Horan’s co-captain, Alex Morgan, has urged the team to rediscover its swagger.Some of Horan’s moments of leadership have been unspoken, like when she stood up to a challenge from the Netherlands team and scored a tying goal.John Cowpland/Associated PressAll the while, Horan has continued to make the rounds, to offer words of encouragement behind closed hotel-room doors, in training sessions and at team meals. She has been a conduit to carry the team’s ideas to the coaches, and a messenger to bring them back. She has spoken up, but also taken time to hear people out.The World Cup rookies are listening. Lynn Williams, a fixture on the team for years now taking part in her first World Cup. She said she had seen Horan take players aside and speak to the team’s coaches. The meetings, she said, take place one on one and in small groups, and they happen anywhere, and at any time. Sometimes, the messages are even unspoken, like the moment Horan shook off a hard challenge by a Netherlands player, strode to the penalty, shoved her aggressor in the chest and scored the tying goal.“Not only is she leading by like words, but also by example,” Williams said. “So, yeah, I think she’s done a really good job and in rallying the group and keeping us together.”Sitting at a table in front of reporters, Williams turned to Horan and said, “Thanks, Lindsey.” More

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      At the World Cup, the Field Thins and the Contenders Expand

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      After 48 games, half of the teams have been sent home. And yet it feels as if the field of potential winners is bigger than it was at the start.There are a few things that can be known for certain. Canada, the Olympic champion, will not add a Women’s World Cup to its list of honors this year. Marta, the Brazilian star, will not end her career with the one international trophy that has eluded her. And Germany, somehow, managed to engineer its own exit despite winning its first game by six goals. Three superpowers, from three continents, are out.At the end of two weeks, this World Cup has incontrovertibly delivered on its stated aim — to provide a stage on which women’s soccer’s simmering revolution might burst into life. That is about as far as the certainty stretches. Nigeria beat Australia. Colombia overcame Germany. The United States could not score against Portugal. Jamaica held France at bay.That unpredictability, that sense of old hierarchies and longstanding orders being overturned on a daily basis, has illuminated the World Cup, of course. After 48 games — three quarters of the tournament — half of the teams have been sent home, and yet it feels as if the field of potential winners is broader than it was even two weeks ago.In part, that is testament to the spirit, talent and organization of the teams — Jamaica, South Africa and Nigeria — that have gate-crashed what many had assumed would be a party for the richer nations of North America, Europe and Australasia. To some extent, though, it can be attributed not just to the strength of those new contenders, but to the weakness of the squads assumed to be at the head of the field.The United States is, strictly speaking, still on track for a third straight world title. Australia, co-hosting with New Zealand, eventually emerged unscathed from its group. And most of Europe’s squadron of contenders — England, Spain, France, Sweden and the Netherlands — is present, too.It would be an exaggeration, though, to suggest that any of them look entirely convincing. The United States was the width of a goal post away from group-stage elimination against Portugal. Vlatko Andonovski’s team has looked insipid in all three of its games. It has won only one, the first, against Vietnam. Against more polished opposition, the U.S. has seemed to lack both ideas and inspiration.The United States faces Sweden on Sunday. The loser is out.Andrew Cornaga/Associated PressIt has not been the most convincing start to the defense of its trophy, as several former members of the team — all working in the news media — have noted. Tobin Heath, Christen Press and Carli Lloyd have all offered a little friendly fire in the days since the United States’ scoreless draw with Portugal; their assessments, certainly, have been less glowing than those of the first lady, Jill Biden. That feedback may help to bind the squad together. It may have a galvanizing effect. It may not.As they attempt to work through the team’s issues and find some sort of patchwork solution, Andonovski and his staff will take small solace in the fact that almost every one of the Americans’ peers and rivals has experienced similar teething problems. This year, few teams have been immune from the joyous chaos of the tournament.Australia has lost its captain, its goal threat and its talisman — three roles, one Sam Kerr — and, until that demolition of Canada, it had started to show. It squeezed past Ireland and lost to Nigeria, all while seeming a little dazed and directionless in the absence of Kerr, who was supposed to be this tournament’s star.If Kerr can recover from her calf injury, then the Australian become a formidable prospect. If she cannot, then it is hard not to feel they are just a little diminished.Halimatu Ayinde and Nigeria brushed aside Australia to become one of three African teams in the round of 16.Patrick Hamilton/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA similar suspicion lingers over England, the reigning European champion. Sarina Wiegman’s team has won all of its games relatively comfortably. It sealed first place in its group with an ominous 6-1 victory, against China, the sort of win that might yet look like an omen by the end of the month.The issue, though, is injury. England came into the tournament without several key players and has subsequently lost another, the Barcelona midfielder Keira Walsh. Wiegman, astute and pragmatic, has always managed to find solutions, but even her inventiveness would be tested should her resources thin any further.Other teams do not even have the excuse of injury for their inconsistency. Spain started the tournament well, smooth and imperious, and then promptly lost heavily to Japan. France started poorly, held to a draw by Jamaica, but has slowly grown in stature, defeating Brazil and then sauntering past Panama.Chloe Kelly and England have a favorable path and a bit of momentum.Brenton Edwards/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere is an art to that, of course, a skill in gathering momentum as a tournament turns into the home straight. But then there is something to be said for serenity, too, and only two teams can lay claim to that state: Sweden, which sailed through what was admittedly a relatively kind group and now faces the U.S. in the round of 16, and Japan, which produced the performance of the tournament so far in picking apart Spain, both as a team and a concept.A couple of weeks ago, both of those countries would have been regarded as respectable outsiders, the sort of teams that might pose a threat if they caught a break, if some of their more illustrious opponents fell by the wayside, if they could click while others sputtered. Now, it does not look like quite such a long shot to suggest one or the other might be able to stay the course.It has taken 48 games to reach this point. Sixteen teams are gone. Sixteen teams remain. They will all have seen enough, experienced enough, to believe there is very little reason to rule anything out. There is very little that can be known, even now. The Women’s World Cup has reached that point when it becomes a smaller, more ruthless tournament. It feels, though, as if it is more open than it was at the start. More

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      Morocco Wins, Then Waits, and Then Starts Celebrating

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      It had been more than an hour since Anissa Lahmari had scored the goal that put Morocco in front, the one that was poised to deliver another historic win for her team at its first Women’s World Cup.But it was not over yet. And so Morocco’s players had to wait.They huddled together around a staff member’s cellphone as Germany bombed balls upfield, as it tried to thread passes through a stingy South Korea defense and as it lofted hopeful ones over it. A Germany goal, any goal, would save its World Cup and dash Morocco’s improbable dream of advancing to the knockout rounds. The minutes ticked on, and on, and then suddenly, it was over.Morocco had beaten Colombia, 1-0. Germany had not beaten South Korea, 1-1. And after all the minutes, and all the waiting, that was all it took: Morocco, a team in its first World Cup, a team that had never won a game in the tournament a week ago but now has won two in a row, was through. And it didn’t seem to know what to do.When the referee’s whistle blew in the Germany game, Morocco’s players broke their huddle and ran. They ran in search of hugs. They ran to find teammates. A few ran just to run.Morocco had already won, of course. The first North African team to qualify for the Women’s World Cup, and the first to field a player in a hijab, its mere presence in the tournament had been an achievement, and an inspiration. Yet Morocco was interested in more than mere participation.As one of eight first-time entrants in this year’s expanded tournament, it had arrived with a squad that was little known even to most Moroccans before it qualified on home soil last July. It had won fans and respect in its qualification journey, but even its coach knew the next step would be a big one.“They showed us that they can fill stadiums and make Moroccans happy,” the team’s French coach, Reynald Pedros, had said before the tournament. “They did it on the African stage. Now we are hoping to do the same on the international one.”Now that they had, Pedros didn’t seem to know what to do. He burst into tears on the field as his team and his staff celebrated their achievement. Players dropped to their knees in thanks. Others embraced. In the center of it all, seemingly lost and uncertain where to go, or who to hug next, was Pedros.Back home, joy took over Morocco, where only seven months ago fans had filled the streets to cheer the men’s team as it made a run to the World Cup semifinals. Now, the nation may soon be cheering for its women’s squad.In Casablanca on Thursday morning, people (mostly men) had filled cafes quietly to watch the game. There was little hope for Morocco entering the day, since Colombia led the group and Germany was widely expected to join it in the knockouts. But when South Korea scored early, and Morocco took the lead against Colombia just before halftime when Lahmari banged in the rebound of a missed penalty kick for the opening goal, fans started to hope.In one cafe, the men inside checked their phones repeatedly, updating the score in the Germany game. A few said quiet prayers.As a stunning victory, and an even more shocking possibility — advancement out of the group stage in the team’s first World Cup — crept closer, the stress mounted. Across the Mediterranean in France, Kenza Haloui, 34, had left work in Nice to watch the match alone while texting with her cousins in Morocco. She had grown up in Fez and played soccer her whole life before moving to Europe. When Morocco finally won, she said, “I felt so many emotions.”At the final whistle, though, the celebrations were muted: briefs shouts of joy, some honking of car horns. And then people move on with their day.Soumia Idba, 39, watched the game at the office in Casablanca, but couldn’t help but notice how difficult it had been to view it. “It was very hard to find a way to watch a game,” Idba said. “It wasn’t like in Qatar. Most Moroccans watch online.”If the celebrations were subdued, though, the team’s next game may stoke more emotions: By advancing, Morocco earned a date with France in the round of 16 on Tuesday. It is the same matchup that, in December at the men’s World Cup, brought fans into the streets of Casablanca and Marrakesh and dozens of cities across North Africa and Europe. France won that day, ending the dream of Morocco’s men’s team.The country now has a second chance. Its women’s team has something no one expected: its first. More

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      Lionel Messi Scores Twice for Inter Miami in Win Over Orlando

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      Messi is scoring in bunches and last-place Inter Miami is a contender in the Leagues Cup. Could an M.L.S. playoff push be next?When it was announced that Lionel Messi was coming to Major League Soccer, there was excitement, of course. But there were also doubts. Would he treat his stay in the league as a retirement tour or even a vacation? Would the lower stakes lead to less effort? Would his age — 36 — catch up to him?In retrospect, it should have been obvious. It turns out that if you put the best player of his generation into M.L.S., less than two years removed from winning the Ballon d’Or as the game’s best player, and less than a year since he was named best player at the World Cup, he is going to be really, really good.Really good.Messi had two more goals on Wednesday night, bringing his total to five in his three games for his new team, Inter Miami. Still saddled with the worst record in the league, Inter is playing with panache, and Messi, at times, looks unstoppable.Messi’s arrival after two years at Paris St.-Germain coincided with the start of the Leagues Cup, a newly expanded tournament for teams from M.L.S. and Mexico’s Liga MX.He entered his first game on July 21 against Cruz Azul of Mexico early in the second half. And perhaps with the flair of a showman he waited until deep into injury time to hit a free kick from behind the circle over the wall and in the corner of the net to break a 1-1 tie.Eight minutes into his first start on July 25 against Atlanta, Messi was sprung clear, barely onside. He hit the post but slotted in the rebound. Later in the half, he latched onto a cross and had an easy second goal in what would eventually be a 4-0 win.That put Miami in the round of 32 against Orlando on Wednesday night. In the first half, Messi, completely unmarked, chested down a pass in the box and one-timed it into the net. In the second half, again with lots of space, he took a little chip from Josef Martínez and volleyed it home. Miami won, 3-1.Miami is now four wins away from the Leagues Cup title. Its form is all the more remarkable because the team pre-Messi was, quite simply, bad. It sits dead last of the 29 M.L.S. teams in the league standings with a 5-14-3 record. But that record does not matter at all in the Cup; Miami next travels to Dallas for a round of 16 game on Sunday.Inter Miami made the playoffs last year with a .500 record and was expected to improve with the addition of Martínez. But nothing seemed to go right for the team in the early going.Inter’s midseason revamp did not end with Messi. They also added two former greats at Barcelona, Messi’s longtime club, midfielder Sergio Busquets and defender Jordi Alba, as well as Diego Gómez, a young Paraguayan midfielder. Messi is often said to make his teammates better, and one who seems to have benefited is Robert Taylor, a Finnish wingback, who has been regularly involved in Messi’s attacks and also had two goals of his own in the Atlanta game.It is impossible not to notice that in his games so far, Messi has been getting a lot more space to maneuver than he did in Europe. Of course, Messi is a genius at finding space. But the quality of the defending he is now facing is a clear cut below what he is used to.In Champions League play, it was hardly unusual for him to be swarmed by strong, technically skilled defenders, some of whom had little compunction about pushing the physicality of their challenges to or beyond the legal limit.M.L.S. defenders, whether overawed, less adept positionally or just too slow, haven’t kept anything like the same kind of pressure on him, at least so far. In his third game, Orlando did try to turn up the physicality, but the success of that tactic was debatable given his two goals.Win or lose the Leagues Cup, Miami will return to M.L.S. league play on Aug. 20. With Superman now playing attacking midfielder, can they actually come back and make the playoffs, or even win the title?They are 12 points and six places away from the playoff spots with just 12 games to play. That seems like a big gap. But based on his first three games, Messi looks like he can make a run at bridging it. More

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      Spain’s Team Went to War. At the World Cup, It Has to Win the Peace.

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      A failed rebellion against Coach Jorge Vilda ended with a dozen players dropped for the Women’s World Cup. Those who remain might be good enough to win it.A couple of days before Spain’s first genuine test of this World Cup — an encounter with Japan in Wellington, New Zealand — team officials became aware of an issue. The players, it turned out, were bored. Their families and friends, who had traveled halfway around the globe to watch their games, were bored. Some of the squad had young children in tow. They were bored, too.Spain had chosen the town of Palmerston North as its base for the tournament. It made perfect sense. The team was guaranteed to play all of its games until the semifinal on New Zealand’s North Island. Palmerston, a university town a couple of hours north of Wellington, and a short flight from Auckland, fit the bill.But three weeks into their stay — Spain arrived in New Zealand well in advance of its first game, hoping to draw the sting from the jet lag — the place had started to pall. New Zealand’s second-largest noncoastal city boasted precious little to do, particularly in the evenings. The players, and their families, wanted to move.Even with the game with Japan looming, the Spanish federation acceded to the players’ request. Officials began the laborious task of moving an entire elite sports team — 23 players, 31 coaches and support staff, piles of equipment and mounds of accouterments — to the James Cook Hotel in Wellington in the middle of a tournament.And as if that was not enough, the federation did what it could to help the dozens of family members who formed the team’s traveling caravan with their arrangements, too. Logistically, it was a considerable heave. The kind that is hardly ideal from a sporting perspective. In Spain’s case, though, it was worth it, just to keep the peace.Alexia Putellas, the two-time Ballon d’Or winner, racing upfield against Japan.Marty Melville/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFew teams arrived in Australia and New Zealand with more pedigree than Spain. Jorge Vilda’s team, after all, boasts not only Alexia Putellas, the two-time Ballon d’Or winner, but also Aitana Bonmati, the midfielder regarded as her heir apparent. They are two of nine members of the squad drawn from Barcelona, European club soccer’s unquestioned powerhouse.No team, though, landed in quite such a fragile state. Last September, in the aftermath of Spain’s elimination from the European Championship a month or so earlier, 15 players sent the country’s federation a boilerplate email withdrawing themselves from consideration for the national team.The signatories included not just Bonmati, but Patri Guijarro, Mariona Caldentey and Mapi León, central figures in the great Barcelona side, as well as Ona Batlle, Laia Aleixandri and Leila Ouahabi, some of the country’s most high-profile exports. Three players — Putellas, the forward Jenni Hermoso and Irene Paredes, then the national team’s captain — did not send the email but were seen as giving it their tacit support.Spain had, in an instant, lost the core of its golden generation.The precise nature of the grievances that had forced the players’ hand remained oblique in public — the email referred only to “the latest events that have occurred in the national team, and the situation they have created” — but, privately, the list of complaints was both long and, in the context of women’s soccer, distinctly familiar.The players, now ensconced in professional environments at their clubs, felt the national team program was outmoded, not up to the standard they had come to expect. The facilities the federation provided for them were subpar, the players believed. They traveled to some games by bus, rather than plane, as many of their rivals did, or as they would at club level.Vilda with Luis Rubiales, center, the federation president, in Wellington on Monday.Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesVilda, the coach, was said to have fostered an oppressive workplace environment, one in which the players’ every move was monitored by his staff. Nobody ever confirmed as much, but it was widely assumed that his removal would be required if the players were to contemplate returning.The federation, though, decided on a less conciliatory approach. Vilda was, in the words of Luis Rubiales, the federation president, “untouchable.” If the group of “15 plus three,” as it had come to be seen, did not want to play for Spain, that was fine: Spain would go and find some people who did. Vilda called up a scratch squad, and immediately embarked on a run of 16 games in which his team drew once, lost once, and won the rest. Among the teams it defeated was the mighty United States, but also Japan, Jamaica and Norway.As the World Cup drew closer, though, the hard-line stance started to soften. Hermoso and Paredes, only informally associated with the strike, were called back into the team, forging a path for the others. The Spanish players’ union volunteered to mediate a meeting between the holdouts and Ana Álvarez, the federation’s director of women’s soccer.Ana Álvarez, the federation’s director of women’s soccer.Luis Millan/EPA, via ShutterstockThe federation refused, but made an alternative suggestion: Álvarez would meet with every player individually, giving them an opportunity to lodge their complaints. Through May and June, she held more than a dozen meetings with the disaffected players, inviting some to Madrid and traveling to Barcelona to see others.Each meeting lasted two or three hours, according to people in soccer with direct knowledge of the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private, and personal, discussions. Álvarez sought to understand the roots of their discontent, to gather feedback, to ask how each player would like things to change in the future. Most of the meetings were cordial, and constructive.At the end, though, there was an awkward coda. The players had removed themselves from international contention by email. They had to make themselves available again in the same way. The federation would not risk calling up anyone who might reject the olive branch.Conscious of not only their own professional ambitions but various commercial agreements, the majority of the players acquiesced. Guijarro and León were among the handful who refused. “Some things have to change, and if they don’t, then it won’t go away,” León told the Spanish newspaper Mundo Deportivo earlier this year. “Missing the World Cup will bother me a lot, but I have values and beliefs.” Her Barcelona teammate, Guijarro, cited “consistency” as her explanation.Patri Guijarro, left, and Mapi León, second left, during a Barcelona match in March. They are missing the World Cup.Albert Gea/ReutersWhen Vilda named his World Cup squad, though, only three of the players to have signed the original email — Bonmati, Batlle and Caldentey — were included. The others had all been omitted. The coach had decided, instead, to prioritize those players who had helped Spain prepare for the tournament.Still, the situation was febrile. The 23 players under Vilda’s aegis might all have “wanted to be here,” as Paredes put it, but that unity of purpose veiled deep schisms. His squad now contained both mutineers and their replacements.He had done what he could to ease the tensions, not only visiting a Barcelona training session in the spring but, according to those players who had remained in the national team squad throughout, relaxing his approach. “It has been a tough, special season,” Vilda said on the eve of the World Cup. “But it has given us chance to learn. The federation has always been open to dialogue, and to solve things.”The decision to listen to the players’ requests to move their base midway through the tournament, then, is perhaps the most dramatic illustration of that détente, but it is not the only one. Spain now boasts a vastly expanded coaching staff, including for the first time both a nutritionist and a podiatrist in the traveling party. The standard of accommodation and transport has improved, too.The players were encouraged to expand that further, too, by inviting family and friends along at the federation’s expense: Each member of the World Cup squad was granted an allowance of $16,000 to pay for the travel and lodging.A training session in Wellington. Spain moved its team to a new training base after players complained of being bored. Amanda Perobelli/ReutersThe newspaper El País has reported that dozens of parents, siblings and children are in New Zealand, sitting behind the dugouts at Spain’s games, arranging their activities on a WhatsApp group titled “Free Tours.”The players have been allowed to spend considerable amounts of down time with them. Even after the game with Japan ended in a deflating 4-0 loss, they were given a morning off to see their loved ones. The atmosphere, according to those on the squad, is much more relaxed and “flexible” than it has been at previous tournaments.There has been a concerted attempt among the players, too, to defuse any lingering tensions. They have veered toward the traditional: long sessions playing two card games, Virus and Brandy, and a renewed focus on forfeits — singing or dancing in front of their peers — for those players who lose games in training.“Things are not forgotten,” Paredes said in an interview with El País. “But we must put them aside knowing that we have a common goal and that we are going for it.”The sense of purpose is such that Bonmati, one of the signatories of the original email, even cast the defeat to Japan as a bonding experience. “This is going to unite us more than ever,” she said.Whether that is how it plays out, of course, remains to be seen. Should Spain lose to Switzerland on Saturday in round of 16, it is not difficult to imagine the uneasy truce breaking.Spain’s preparation for this World Cup, one it genuinely believed it could win, has been fraught and tense and, at times, toxic. It has had enough drama.What it needs, from this point on, is for everything to be as boring as possible. More

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      The Knockout-Stage Showdown Between Sweden and the U.S. Is On

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      Sweden did what the United States could not: It got the goals it needed, secured the win it wanted, and marched toward the game everyone expected.Propelled by a second-half header by Rebecka Blomqvist and a late penalty kick by Elin Rubensson, Sweden earned a 2-0 victory in Hamilton, New Zealand, that sent Argentina out of the World Cup and the Swedes into a highly anticipated round of 16 game against the Americans on Sunday in Melbourne.It will be joined in the round of 16 by South Africa, which stunned Italy, 3-2, with a goal by Thembi Kgatlana two minutes into second-half injury time.The goal sent South Africa to the knockouts for the first time. It will face the Netherlands on Sunday in Sydney.The bigger showcase that day, though, will be the United States-Sweden matchup that had loomed as a possibility for weeks. It really should come as no surprise: The teams will meet for the sixth straight World Cup, and for the seventh time overall in the tournament.The Americans have won four of the previous five meetings, including a 2-0 victory in the group stage four years ago. But Sweden ran circles around the United States two years later at the Tokyo Olympics.Its main advantage over the United States this time, though, may be momentum. Sweden has looked fearsome so far at this World Cup, winning all three of its first-round games and outscoring its opponents by 10-1. More

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      U.S. Tries to Focus on What Comes After Portugal Tie

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      A close call against Portugal at the Women’s World Cup gave the United States a chance to consider what might have been, and then move past it.From where she stood, the ball looked to be headed straight into the goal, and Megan Rapinoe cursed loudly in her head.“My whole international career is over,” she said she thought as a shot by Portugal whistled toward the United States’ net in the final minutes on Tuesday, threatening to end Rapinoe’s final Women’s World Cup.Neither team had scored yet. The tie that loomed would mean the United States would advance to the next round. A loss would send the Americans packing their bags in what would have been the biggest upset in Women’s World Cup history.And so Rapinoe swore as the shot delivered by Portugal forward Ana Capeta headed toward the goal, watching wide-eyed with players on both sides as it veered just a smidgen too far to the right. The ball hit the right post and then, to the relief of Rapinoe and her team, caromed off it and away from the goal.“Girl,” Rapinoe said with a nervous laugh, “that was stressful.”Megan Rapinoe’s World Cup is not over yet. But for a moment, she thought it might be.Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesA few minutes later the game ended, still stuck in a 0-0 tie that meant the United States had finished second to the Netherlands in Group E. Now it’s off to the round of 16 in Melbourne, Australia, where on Sunday the U.S. team most likely will play Sweden. It is trying to forget just how close it came to the exit. It is ready to move on.Forget this long, frustrating night, Rapinoe and her teammates said. Forget that the United States has had trouble scoring at this tournament, they said, and that it just cannot figure out how to convert its passes and its possession into goals.That was the message delivered by Kelley O’Hara, a defender at her fourth World Cup, to the team as it huddled together near midfield after Tuesday’s great escape. O’Hara leaned in and looked around at the faces of her teammates — some sad, some blank, some determined. It doesn’t matter what happened here, she told them.“I just told them, ‘Listen, guys, we did what we had to do,’” O’Hara said. “‘This game’s done.’”Defender Crystal Dunn got the message. “We know we can be better,” she said. “It’s not like everyone’s sitting there like, ‘Wow, that was the most amazing performance we put together.’ But that’s where you have to dig deep.“That’s what it takes to win a World Cup. It’s not easy to do this. Right now we are very fortunate to have another opportunity to put on a great performance.”U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski changed his lineup but his team’s mistakes were worryingly familiar.Andrew Cornaga/Associated PressLater, the team’s coach, Vlatko Andonovski, took time to reflect on the result against Portugal, a team that was expected to be a challenge, but perhaps not quite that much of one.He said that he has seen bright spots in the way the U.S. team has played over its three group stage games, although Tuesday was a low point.“It’s not like we played well, by any means,” he said. “We all know it’s not good enough.”The United States, he knows, has work to do. But none of that is anything to panic about, striker Alex Morgan said. She had finished second in the group at past World Cups. Now the team has all the pieces it needs “to make it all the way” to the final. It just needs to put them together.It’s Andonovski’s job to do that. Against Portugal, he finally made some changes to his lineup. Now he will need to make a few more.On Tuesday, Rose Lavelle, the star midfielder restored to the starting lineup, used her creativity and energy to drive her teammates forward, to create chances for them to score. But after knocking down a Portuguese player, she received her second yellow card in two games, meaning she will be suspended from the round of 16 game.A second yellow card in two games means Rose Lavelle will be suspended in the round of 16.Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesO’Hara said it was disappointing that Lavelle wouldn’t be able to play on Sunday, especially after she came back from an injury and was building back her minutes. She had been restored to the lineup to maximize her “energy, her fight and her aggressiveness and just her flair,” O’Hara said, though she had no details about how the team would regain its confidence now that Lavelle will be out. She frowned when asked how the team will regroup mentally.“We’re just going to do a couple of Kumbayas, and we’ll be good,” she said before quickly turning and walking off.Rapinoe was not sure, either, of how, exactly, the team would rebuild its confidence. But, she said, it can easily be done. Earlier this week, she recalled a moment in the quarterfinal game versus Brazil at the 2011 World Cup, when the U.S. team was in extra time and was just seconds from elimination before she fired in a cross to Abby Wambach that was headed in for a tying goal.“I thought about that in the moment,” she said, a sensation she repeated on Tuesday. Facing an early exit back then, she added, left her talking to herself. “Actually, I’m like: ‘We’re going to be the worst team ever in the history of the national team. It’s going to be terrible.’“And then, obviously, you know, that play happens.”With one brilliant pass, Rapinoe had altered her team’s fate.Those kinds of small miracles, she knows, can happen again. More

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      The Gaps Get Smaller as the World Cup Gets Larger

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      Expanding the Women’s World Cup was a good idea. Just not for the reasons FIFA thinks.Given where the journey had started and where it had led, it was no wonder that watching the Philippines win a game at the Women’s World Cup felt as if it defied rational explanation, even to those involved.Not quite two years ago, the Philippines had toiled to beat Nepal in a qualifying game just to earn a place in a low-profile regional tournament. Now that same team had beaten New Zealand — on home soil, no less — and with the whole world watching.For those who were part of that journey, the distance traveled and the ground traversed seemed too great to be feasible. It was impossible to imagine that a team that had been there could ever be here, and vice versa.“Overwhelming, crazy,” said Sarina Bolden, the live-wire forward who had scored her country’s first goal at a World Cup. Her coach, Alen Stajcic, found it hard to pitch his hyperbole. He started out at “staggering” and went from there, cycling through “miraculous and unbelievable” before landing on “mind-blowing.”The emotion, the euphoric instinct to attribute the wondrous to the divine, was understandable. The Philippines had entered the World Cup as a rank outsider. “No one expected us to win,” Bolden said. “We’re used to that.” Its team had never won a game at the tournament before. That was not desperately surprising: It had previously played only one, and that was last week. Just a few months ago, it was ranked outside the world’s top 50.The Philippines went out of the World Cup, but not before leaving its mark on it.Marty Melville/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe thing about miracles, though, is that their mechanics can be a little more mundane than they may first appear. The Philippines might have left the tournament precisely as anticipated — after the group phase, eliminated thanks to an unceremonious 6-0 defeat to Norway — but not before it left an indelible mark.Its victory against New Zealand was the greatest surprise of a World Cup brimming with them. It is just that, beneath the surface, it was perhaps not that much of a surprise at all.To watch the first 10 days of this tournament has been to experience the sensation that the world is simultaneously expanding and contracting. The Philippines beat one of the World Cup’s co-hosts, and Nigeria overcame Australia, the other.Morocco, the first North African team to reach the finals, beat South Korea. Colombia scored in the 97th minute to beat Germany, Europe’s great powerhouse. Jamaica held firm to take a point against France, a result the country’s coach, Lorne Donaldson, described as “No. 1” in its history, “for men or women.”Most of those nations will, of course, follow the same arc as the Philippines. Nigeria and Colombia apart, it is unlikely any will make it as far as the knockout rounds. The phosphene imprint of their brief, dazzling moments in the spotlight, though, will last.And so, too, will the fact that even in defeat, most of those teams making their debuts on this stage have emerged with credit. True, there have been a couple of shellackings: Germany against Morocco, both Spain and Japan against Zambia, Norway against the Philippines.Top women’s players no longer see a gap between themselves and stars from bigger nations because they know one another from club play.David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThose, though, have been isolated cases. Haiti lost only narrowly to England. Ireland has run both Australia and Canada close. The United States scored only three against Vietnam. Nobody has conceded 13 in a single game. Nobody has been humiliated. The horizons of women’s soccer are both broader and closer than ever before.“We’ve been saying this all along,” said Vlatko Andonovski, the coach of the United States. “Whether it’s Nigeria or Jamaica, South Africa and the Philippines: These are the teams that actually show how much women’s soccer has grown.”Regrettably, at some point, FIFA will seek to take credit for that. Effect will be mistaken for cause. Four years ago, with what appeared to be suspiciously little warning, global soccer’s governing body decreed that the Women’s World Cup — previously contested by 24 teams — would expand to 32, the same size as the men’s tournament (for now).At the time, the idea was met with considerable skepticism. The move was announced only a few weeks after Thailand had conceded more than a dozen goals in a game against the United States. Many suspected the expansion would turn an exception into a rule. “A lot of people were worried with the expansion that we weren’t ready for it on the women’s side,” said Randy Waldrum, the Nigeria coach.FIFA’s president, the never less than bombastic Gianni Infantino, was unmoved. “The astounding success of this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in France made it very clear that this is the time to keep the momentum going and take concrete steps to foster the growth of women’s football,” he said. He said he believed more countries would invest in their women’s teams if they had a “realistic chance of qualifying.”From his vantage point — on the Cook Islands, the sun-kissed paradise where for reasons that are not entirely clear he has spent a considerable part of the early stages of the tournament — Infantino would doubtless claim he has been vindicated.Morocco, like the Philippines, posted its first World Cup win in its first trip to the tournament.Brenton Edwards/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWould the Philippines have moved to appoint the experienced Stajcic, the former coach of the Australian women’s team, if it had not seen the World Cup as a realistic target? Without his presence, would his players have garnered the “tournament experience” — in a parade of competitions in both Southeast Asia and Asia as a whole — and “maturity” that Stajcic felt allowed them to hold off New Zealand last week in Wellington?“The commitment level in terms of who they brought in as a coach and the things they’re putting into the program are paying dividends for them,” Waldrum said of the Philippines. “I think that’s why we are seeing the growth.”More than anyone, though, Waldrum is well aware of the holes in Infantino’s logic. His team, after all, is still locked in a pay dispute with its national federation, which has so far withheld the players’ win bonuses; Waldrum himself has previously complained that he has been “very frustrated by the federation and the lack of support.”Donaldson, in charge of a Jamaica side that might yet qualify for the tournament’s knockout phase, could make a similar case. At least some of the expenses associated with bringing Jamaica to the World Cup were paid for by a fund-raising campaign arranged by the mother of one of its players.The expansion of the World Cup has, instead, worked despite the national associations — still, in many cases, chronically lacking in both money and commitment — rather than because of them. And it has done so because of a host of factors that have little, if anything, to do with the tournament itself.The increased professionalization of the game, particularly in Europe, has led to vast and rapid improvements in everything from conditioning to diet to tactical sophistication. The coaches, on the whole, are more experienced, more adroit, more suitable to the talent of their players.“Our preparation is a little bit better this time around,” Donaldson said. “Just the ability to have proper coaching, proper diet and the understanding of what’s going on in world soccer” had helped his team to compete despite a colossal resource gap to the game’s bigger, richer nations, he said.Haiti has left an impression on bigger nations despite not posting a win.Dan Peled/ReutersAt the same time, the whirlwind growth of the game has led to the players themselves being granted more opportunities to play competitive, elite soccer, as the clubs of the surging European leagues — as well as the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States — cast their nets ever wider in the hunt for talent.Waldrum’s squad with Nigeria, for example, contains a host of players employed in France and Spain, including Asisat Oshoala, the Barcelona forward. Ireland’s team is drawn, in large part, from the teams of England’s Women’s Super League.As many as 14 of Haiti’s squad currently play in France — not all for clubs like Lyon, as the teenage midfielder Melchie Dumornay now does, but professional, committed clubs nonetheless. Even the Philippines, the ultimate underdog, has called up only three players from its domestic league. The majority of its team plays, instead, in Sweden, Norway and Australia.“Some of these players are getting a chance now to go and play in some of the top leagues, and they’re taking it,” Donaldson said. “You can see it, the Jamaican players, the Haitian players. They’re developing.”And as they do so, the players they have encountered — the ones who might once have seemed so distant — become just a little more familiar. They know they belong on the same field, because they have done it before. The horizon, the one that seems so broad, is far closer than it might appear. What looks, at first glance, like a miracle, a bolt from a clear blue sky, is really nothing more than the landfall of a gathering storm. More