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    Swedish Soccer Prioritized Fans Over Finances. Now, Business Is Booming.

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    While most of Europe’s leagues engage in a Sisyphean quest to source as much money as possible, Sweden has chosen a different model. But its rewards come with risk.The warning sounded over and over, first in Swedish and then in English. A fire had been detected. Please evacuate the stadium. The players left the field. Outside, fire crews were arriving. But in the stands, as a thick cloud of smoke wreathed and coiled in the floodlights, nobody moved. The fans were going to make the game happen by sheer force of will.It was a game they had been anticipating for some time. The top two teams in the Allsvenskan, Sweden’s elite league, had gone into the final day of the season separated by just three points. A quirk of scheduling fate meant that their last game was with each other. Malmo, the host, had to win to claim the championship. Elfsborg, the visitor, needed only to avoid defeat. It had been billed as a guldfinal: a gold-medal match.The idea of a single game that decides the destiny of a league title is vanishingly rare in modern soccer, where championships are won over the course of a season rather than in a winner-take-all final. It has not happened in England since 1989, and Italy has not produced such a denouement in more than half a century.Fans of Malmo, left, and Elfsborg. The teams met to decide the Swedish league title on the final day of the season.Betina Garcia for The New York Times“It might not be the best league in Europe,” the league’s chief executive said, “but the atmosphere in the stands is.”Betina Garcia for The New York TimesIt is also increasingly unusual for a title even to be in play as the season draws to a close. Over the last 30 years, soccer has become so financially stratified that many domestic tournaments are little more than monthslong processions for the wealthiest teams. Sweden, though, is different, a solitary beacon of competitive balance. In four of the last six editions of the Allsvenskan, the championship has gone to the wire.How it has produced that is a story of rejecting orthodoxy, of asking why sports exist and whom they exist for. But it is also a story of how hard it is to stand alone, and how fragile even the most heartening success can be.A Different PathThe walls of Malmo’s Eleda Stadium are full of mementos of the glory days, the era when Swedish teams could compete with Europe’s giants and, occasionally, beat them.In 1979, Malmo, fielding a team of amateurs, made it all the way to the European Cup final. It is still the only Scandinavian team to feature in the game and its successor, the Champions League final. In the 1980s, IFK Gothenburg twice won (lesser) continental trophies. As late as 1994, IFK beat Manchester United and Barcelona in the Champions League.Those victories proved a last stand. The game’s dynamic changed drastically as money rushed into soccer in the 1990s, first from broadcasters, then private investors, and finally oligarchs, corporations and nation states. The riches created a new class of unassailable domestic powerhouses.“Big money fed the biggest clubs,” enabling them to construct squads full of superstars, said Mats Enquist, who served as general secretary of Svenskelitfotboll, or SEF, the body that runs Sweden’s professional leagues, from 2012 until early this year. For Sweden, as for many countries outside Europe’s major television markets, he said, it was “impossible to keep up.”Malmo, in blue, had to win the game to claim its third title in four years. Elfsborg needed only to avoid defeat.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesInstead of grasping at shadows, Sweden’s response was — effectively — to opt out. In 1999, the country enshrined in law a rule that 51 percent of its sports teams had to be owned by their members: the fans. In 2007, when that rule was challenged, the fans fought fiercely to protect it.“That was the moment that the fans first realized the power they had,” said Noa Bachner, the author of a book that examines Sweden’s rejection of soccer’s economic orthodoxy.Yet they wielded it over a bleak landscape.“Crowds were going down, the standard of play was not good, the league had a lot of problems with hooliganism,” Mr. Enquist said. A survey that he commissioned as one of his first acts found that only 11 percent of fans regarded the Allsvenskan as their favorite competition, far behind England’s Premier League and the Champions League. “It was not a good place to be,” he said.Mr. Enquist was an outsider to soccer when he took a leading role in it: a software entrepreneur by trade, and a volleyball and golf fan by inclination. It was his job, though, to sort it out.His solution set Sweden on an almost heretical path in modern soccer. Unable to turn to rich investors, the SEF harnessed the country’s most obvious strength, the fans. In the face of considerable skepticism, the authorities “touched hands” with the supporters, Mr. Enquist said, and set about designing a league they wanted to watch, and watch live.They negotiated limits on behavior, designating invading the field and throwing missiles as red lines but allowing a tacit leeway on pyrotechnics in service to spectacle. They persuaded the police to adopt a more conciliatory approach rather than “treating all fans as potential hooligans,” as Lars-Christer Olsson, the league’s president until this year, said.Flares and clashes with the police marred the season’s final day. Betina Garcia for The New York TimesA decade later, the transformation has been staggering. Almost alone among Europe’s mid-tier league, Swedish soccer is a picture of health. It has had 11 different champions in 20 years. Attendances have doubled in the last decade; this year brought record crowds. The league’s revenues have tripled in the same period. Now, more than 40 percent of Swedish fans identify the Allsvenskan as their priority.The game of the year between Malmo and Elfsborg should have been the perfect distillation of all that work, an illustration of what makes Sweden a standard-bearer for a different version of soccer. Instead, it highlighted how fine the line is between empowering fans and losing control of them.The start of the second half was delayed by 30 minutes as Elfsborg’s fans confronted a line of riot police officers, and then by another half-hour when Malmo’s ultras, the team’s most hard-core supporters, set off so many smuggled-in pyrotechnics that they triggered the fire alarm. When Malmo’s victory was secured, thousands of fans rushed the field. A handful raced toward their Elfsborg counterparts and hurled lit flares into their packed sections.“There is a thin margin,” said Pontus Jansson, a veteran defender who returned to Malmo this year after a decade abroad to draw the curtain on his career. “They stepped over it.”For Fans, By FansThe moment when Malmo’s players and staff claimed their title — two hours later, once all the smoke had cleared — was a homespun sort of occasion. They walked out in small groups to collect their medals, in velveteen presentation boxes, from a collapsible table. There were no glitter cannon or smoke machines at their backs.Instead, the photo that will one day grace the walls alongside all the other mementos of triumphs past captured the two elements that make up the club: the players and, massed on the field behind them, the fans.Defender Pontus Jansson with his title-winning teammates on a platform and the club’s fans behind a barrier on the pitch.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesEverything Swedish soccer has become has been constructed by, and for, the people who go to watch it in stadiums. Mr. Bachner, the author, reels off the start of a long list of examples: the absence of corporations, sovereign wealth funds and “multiclub projects” from the ranks of club owners; sustained investment in women’s teams; an unofficial ban on holding training camps in authoritarian states; a rule stating that the league has to give at least two months’ notice before moving games for television.The clearest illustration, though, is that Sweden — alone among Europe’s major nations — has resisted the introduction of video assistant referees. The clubs, at the behest of their members, have consistently voted against the technology, a source of controversy elsewhere because of its not-infrequent errors and interminable delays.“I think the fans have the feeling it disturbs the ambience in the stadium,” Mr. Olsson said.There are things that Sweden’s democratic tradition cannot vote out of existence. Malmo’s championship, for example, means another potential infusion of Champions League income that might be enough to give the club — already Sweden’s richest — an insurmountable competitive advantage.The issue of the ultras, too, poses a problem. “It feels as though there are two games taking place,” Mr. Bachner said. “One on the field, and one in the stands, where these groups are seeing how they can display their power, and they don’t mind if 20,000 other people have to wait around while they do it.”Malmo fans storming the field after the match.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesSweden is not the only country facing that challenge, but Mr. Bachner acknowledged concern that the chaos on the season’s showcase day would lead to calls for more aggressive policing, which could threaten the delicate alliance between the authorities and the fans.To many, that would be a step back. “It might not be the best league in Europe,” said Johan Lindvall, the league’s chief executive, “but the atmosphere in the stands is.” Matchdays are both the cornerstone on which all the success has been built, and the proof of how far it has come.“After we scored the goal, the noise was crazy,” Mr. Jansson said. His presence alone is a case in point. He had spent the past seven years becoming part of English soccer’s furniture. Just 32, he could perhaps still be playing there, amid the superstars of the Premier League. Instead, in April, he chose to come home to experience what Swedish soccer had become.“That atmosphere,” he said. “That’s what brought me back.”A Malmo player on the pitch as smoke filled the air.Betina Garcia for The New York Times 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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      Is Japan the Best Team Left in the World Cup?

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      Champions in 2011, the team returned to the final in the next tournament and then fell behind the world’s best teams. It’s back, and playing like a champion.After the United States and seven European teams reached the quarterfinals of the Women’s World Cup four years ago, it was widely assumed that soccer’s global power base would remain stalled like a weather front in those regions four years later.But this is a tournament of surprise, upended expectation and cracks in the foundation of women’s soccer tradition. The United States and Germany, ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in the world, with six world championships between them, were sent home early and stunned.Five European teams remain, but it is Japan that might be the most impressive contender, a sagging power suddenly revived and the only team left standing to have won a World Cup.With unity of movement, a mostly unsolvable defense and tactical flexibility, Nadeshiko, as the team is known, has delivered 14 goals and conceded only one in four matches ahead of Friday’s meeting with Sweden in the quarterfinals in Auckland, New Zealand. Hinata Miyazawa has been a revelation at midfield, scoring five goals in this World Cup — the most of any player — after scoring only four times in 22 previous appearances.Hinata Miyazawa, left, during team practice in Auckland.Abbie Parr/Associated PressHaving wilted after winning the 2011 World Cup in a penalty kick shootout against the United States, Japan has bloomed anew with versatility to play the possession style of short passes known as tiki-taka or to launch searing counterattacks. After a blistering 4-0 loss to Japan during group play, Spain Coach Jorge Vilda said that his team’s defeat had been psychic as well as numerical. “Mentally, of course,” Vilda said, “this has done some damage.”After Japan defeated Norway by 3-1 in the round of 16, Caroline Graham Hansen, the Norwegian star who plays for the Champions League winner Barcelona, said that Japan showed why it might be the best team in the tournament.“They’re so disciplined and very structured in the way they play offense and defense,” Hansen said.Friday’s quarterfinal might play out as an engaging challenge of physicality versus technique. Sweden has scored four of its nine goals on corner kicks, a total that nearly grew last Sunday as it packed the six-yard box against the United States like a crowded elevator.But the Swedes could not manage a goal in 90 minutes of regulation and 30 minutes of overtime before subduing the Americans, finally and microscopically, on penalty kicks. Only the brilliant anticipation and reaction of goalkeeper Zecira Musovic kept the outcome from being reversed. A number of Sweden’s players appeared near exhaustion, particularly left back Jonna Andersson, who was beaten down the flank repeatedly by the speed of Trinity Rodman and Lynn Williams.Not until kickoff on Friday will it become evident whether Andersson and her teammates have had sufficient time to recover to face a relentless Japanese team that has been much more incisive in each of its matches than the United States was in any of its games.“They don’t play as directly as the U.S., so it’s going to be a different kind of game,” said Sweden’s coach, Peter Gerhardsson. “It’ll be more about possession.”Sweden may set its defense low, trying to absorb and dissipate Japan’s attack; its goal, Gerhardsson said, is normally to try to win the ball back after its opponent makes four or five passes.“With Japan, maybe it’s 10 to 15 passes, but we still want to win the ball,” he said. “And, then, transition is going to be important.”Japan entered this World Cup ranked 11th by FIFA, a sign of how far its fortunes had slid after winning the World Cup and returning to the final in 2015. Its inspiring 2011 victory came four months after an earthquake and tsunami had devastated the country’s northeast coast, killing more than 15,000 people and displacing thousands more.Japan’s players celebrate with the trophy after they won the World Cup in 2011.Patrik Stollarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEven in defeat that year, the American forward Megan Rapinoe said recently, she considered Japan’s victory “one of the greatest stories in all of sports.”But that success began to ebb. When the Japanese team traveled to the 2012 London Olympics, it had to fly coach, while its men’s team, mostly under-23 players, flew business class on the same jet. The women won a silver medal, while the men finished fourth.In the final of the 2015 World Cup, Japan was routed, 5-2, by the United States, largely on the predatory audacity of Carli Lloyd, who scored three goals in the first 16 minutes, including a shot launched from midfield. When Japan failed to qualify for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics the following summer, a makeover began, with the aim of overhauling the senior team but also of increasing the participation of female soccer coaches, referees and players, to create a larger talent pool from which to draw. The stated goal was to register 300,000 female players — up from 50,500 at the time — by 2030.Japan also hired the first female coach for its women’s national team: Asako Takakura, who had been a pioneering player. In an interview with The New York Times months before the 2019 World Cup, she predicted that Japan would win the tournament. She wanted her players to express their individualism, she said, instead of simply prizing the collectivity of the group, which had been a tradition on some previous teams.Instead of lifting the trophy, though, Japan scored only three goals in four matches and exited quickly and meekly. Two years later, Japan’s gold-medal dream at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics ended when it was eliminated by Sweden in the quarterfinals. Takakura was replaced by Futoshi Ikeda, who coached Japan to the 2018 under-20 Women’s World Cup title.As the current World Cup began, many remained skeptical about Japan’s chances, including Takakura, who told Agence France-Presse that Japan was “left behind by the sudden strides that the rest of the world were making” in terms of resources poured into women’s soccer. Not until 2021, for instance, did Japan’s women’s league become fully professional.Shinobu Ohno, who was a member of the 2011 championship team, told the French news agency that Japan’s national team had become sclerotic, unable to adapt to teams that were physically stronger and more tactically adept. But pretournament doubt has since been replaced by ascendant optimism.Japan supporters celebrating after their team’s win against Norway.Marty Melville/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIkeda has constructed a team built on agility, mobility, cohesion and a liberating joyfulness. Nine of Japan’s 23 players are attached to clubs in top women’s leagues in the United States, England, Italy and Sweden, and that has helped develop the confidence, fearlessness and tactical versatility evident in the World Cup.“We’re ready to fight against anyone,” said Saki Kumagai, Japan’s captain and the only player remaining on the roster from the 2011 World Cup. More

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      A Tiny Gap Reveals a Yawning One for the U.S. Women’s Team

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      The idea that the United States was eliminated from the Women’s World Cup by a millimeter is an illusion. Denying that will only guarantee more failures.Even in the highest-resolution image, examined up close, there was not so much as a discernible sliver of daylight. The margin by which the United States was eliminated from the Women’s World Cup was so microscopic that it cannot be expressed in a unit of measurement the country fully recognizes.A millimeter, a single millimeter, is no more than 0.04 inches, yet even that most slender gap can serve as the gossamer border between two realities. Such is the unspoken truth of sports, of course: The difference between triumph and disaster, delight and dismay, can be far thinner than we choose to pretend.For the United States, there is some comfort in that. “It is tough to have your World Cup end by a millimeter,” Alyssa Naeher, the U.S. goalkeeper, said after her team’s loss to Sweden in a penalty shootout Sunday. It does not take an especially vivid imagination to envision how the outcome might have been different.Had Naeher intercepted Lina Hurtig’s shot at a slightly different angle, maybe the spin would have carried the ball to safety. Had Hurtig struck her penalty more softly, or more firmly, maybe Naeher would have saved it more decisively. Granted a reprieve, maybe the United States would have gone on to win that game in the round of 16, the tournament, the crown. Maybe, maybe, maybe.Alyssa Naeher conceding Lina Hurtig’s penalty kick.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat solace, though, is an illusion, and so too is the idea that the United States was eliminated by a millimeter. It was not one penalty that ended its hopes of a third straight title and, in the process, drew the veil over a whole golden, glorious generation, no matter how tempting it might be to believe. This is another unspoken truth of sports: Moments do not exist in isolation.There is a certain irony in the fact that it was against Sweden that the United States, so limp and insipid earlier in the tournament, started to show signs of life. Naomi Girma was imperious. Lindsey Horan was dynamic. Sophia Smith, Trinity Rodman and Lynn Williams were all, at various points, electric. There were glimpses, in Melbourne, Australia, of what this team might one day be.But that should not disguise the shortcomings of what came before. The United States was only in position to be knocked out by Sweden because it had failed to beat both the Netherlands and — more troubling — Portugal in the group stage.The United States, the two-time reigning champion and pretournament favorite and great superpower of women’s soccer, won only one game in Australia and New Zealand, and that was against Vietnam. It was not even supposed to be in Melbourne. It was meant to be in Sydney, playing the Group G runner-up, at a time that had been specially arranged so that it was not in the middle of the long American night or early in the morning.Trinity Rodman in the match against Sweden.Scott Barbour/Associated PressThe spin of the ball, the single millimeter, was the culmination of a succession of failures, ones that can most immediately be traced to the last two weeks, but the roots of which stretch back not just months but years. To dismiss this disappointment as merely a cruel twist of fate is to risk failing to learn from those failures, making them endemic.It is not enough, for example, to point the finger of blame at the coach, Vlatko Andonovski. He will, most likely, be removed from his position before his contract expires at the end of the year, and it is hard to make a case for his retention. This is the worst performance an American team has mustered at a World Cup. A price has to be paid.But Andonovski is not the cause of the malaise. There are structural, systemic issues that have to be addressed, too. There are issues with the way the United States produces players, a fragmented system is reliant on pay-to-play youth teams in disparate leagues, unattached to elite adult teams, feeding into the college system.That was fine when the United States effectively had a monopoly on professionalized women’s soccer, before the major men’s teams of Europe and South America decided — and let’s not cast them as the good guys here, given how long it took — that maybe women might enjoy the chance to play the sport.In an ecosystem in which the intellectual and financial weight of global soccer can be deployed to hothouse talented young players, the American approach is not so much lacking as a guarantee of failure. So, too, is the continued emphasis on physicality, rather than cunning, that such a system favors. It is not a coincidence that the United States was eliminated from the tournament when its one player of genuine invention, Rose Lavelle, was absent. Lavelle is the one player, after all, that her country simply cannot replace.Lindsey Horan of Lyon, left, with Lauren James of Chelsea in a Champions League match.Mike Hewitt/Getty ImagesNurturing talent, though, is just the first problem. It is significant that Horan is the only member of Andonovski’s squad currently playing in Europe. Others, including Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, have spent time there, but most have been drawn back to play in the surging National Women’s Soccer League.That is, in many ways, good. A healthy domestic league is not only desirable but a crucial ingredient in success. But it also hints at a creeping isolationism, a disconnection from Europe’s major leagues, which are now emerging as the game’s fiscal engine and its intellectual crucible, too.The United States needs players competing against their rivals and peers in the Champions League, not only as a finishing school but as a way to better understand their relative strength. Smith, for example, is lavishly gifted, but is she more so than Lauren James of England, Aitana Bonmatí of Spain or Linda Caicedo of Colombia? Answering that question is crucial for understanding how to set expectations.Most immediately, though, what is required is a generational shift. It is, as Rapinoe herself put it, a “sick joke” that her last act at a World Cup will be missing a penalty. She has already confirmed she will retire at the end of the N.W.S.L. season. There are others, though, who may have to be ushered into the autumn of their careers rather less willingly.That is never a pain-free process, and it will be all the more agonizing because of all this team has achieved. Naeher, Morgan, Julie Ertz, Kelley O’Hara and Crystal Dunn — as well as the absent Becky Sauerbrunn — have all enjoyed distinguished, glittering careers, the final, glorious ambassadors of a generation that won two World Cups.The U.S. team could look very different at next year’s Paris Olympics.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesMoving on would always be difficult in a purely sporting sense. It is made all the more charged, though, because of what this team means in a cultural one. They are, rightly, revered as players but they are also admired because of the causes — equal pay, equal rights, the struggle against racism and misogyny and homophobia — that they have willingly adopted.They mean something to people, to fans, in a way that other athletes do not. The adoration, the loyalty, the fervor they have inspired has more in common with political or cultural idols than it does with humdrum sports fandom.As Rapinoe has always acknowledged, though, the activism has to flow downstream from the sport. Winning, she said, is necessary because it is the precondition for people wanting to hear what you have to say. Victory has always been what allowed the U.S. players to speak their minds and to make their stands to the most people.It follows, then, that when they are no longer almost a guarantee of winning — when they might, in some senses, make success less likely — then they cannot be protected for what they represent, for what they mean, rather than what they do. There comes a point when they have to be judged as athletes, not activists, and that means knowing when to say goodbye.None of that would have been changed had Naeher managed to keep out Hurtig’s penalty, had the ball spun just out, had that microscopic difference worked in the Americans’ favor. This United States team was always coming to the end of its road. No matter where the ball landed, there was never any other reality than the one the United States finds itself in now, at the end of one era and the start of another. More

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

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

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      England Routs Sweden to Seal Place in Euro 2022 Final

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      Alessia Russo’s backheel highlighted her team’s 4-0 rout of Sweden and sealed England’s place in Sunday’s Euro 2022 final.Follow live updates of the Euro 2022 final.SHEFFIELD, England — The crowd at Bramall Lane required three viewings before it could settle on the appropriate response. The first, in real time, prompted a jubilant, triumphal roar. The second, on the giant screen in a corner of the stadium as England’s players celebrated below, drew a gasp of appreciation.It was only when almost 30,000 people had the chance to watch the close-up replay, though, that they could see what, exactly, had happened. Alessia Russo, the substitute striker, had not only scored for England with a backheel. She had not only scored with a backheel with a defender on her back, or while also nutmegging Hedvig Lindahl, Sweden’s goalkeeper.What she had done, in fact, was all of the above, and she had done it in the semifinals of a major international tournament, and certainly the biggest game of her life so far.RUSSO WITH THE BACKHEEL NUTMEG TO PUT ENGLAND ONE STEP FROM THE FINAL 😳🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 pic.twitter.com/EGz34224Wl— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) July 26, 2022
      It was only then, armed with a full suite of information, that the crowd could determine the correct reaction. Bramall Lane, in unison, laughed. Not cruelly, not derisively, but in delight and wonder and disbelief.England does not, as a rule, expect to win games of this magnitude. It certainly does not expect to have fun while doing it.Carl Recine/ReutersCarl Recine/ReutersRusso’s backheel caught goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl by surprise, the ball passing right between her legs. By the time she realized what had happened, Russo and the stadium were celebrating.Molly Darlington/ReutersThat can be attributed to the general undercurrent of fatalism that infuses the country’s sporting psyche at all times, of course, but this team — which humbled Sweden, the world’s second-ranked team, by 4-0 — has its own bespoke ghosts, too. England’s women had, after all, made it to the semifinals of their last three major tournaments. They met Japan in the 2015 World Cup, and lost. They met the Netherlands in the 2017 European Championship, and lost. They met the United States in the 2019 World Cup, and by then a pattern was emerging.By the time Euro 2022 got underway, England’s players were aware that the pressure to end that streak was considerable. The tournament was on their home soil. The Football Association had appointed Sarina Wiegman, the coach of the Dutch team that had broken English hearts in 2017, as manager, at no little expense. The vast majority of the squad was corralled from elite teams competing in England’s booming Women’s Super League.As if that was not exacting enough, England’s imperious sweep through the group phase — scoring five goals against Northern Ireland and a dizzying eight against Norway — served to swell hopes and lift expectations.The players have, in keeping with bizarre tradition, started to receive curious questions at news conferences about whether their success might soothe, in some ill-defined and deeply improbable way, the country’s very real concerns about the price of fuel and the soaring cost of basic amenities and a government in self-inflicted disarray.That confluence of circumstances might have been expected to inhibit England as the prospect of the final, of glory, hovered ever closer on the horizon. Wiegman’s team had struggled in its quarterfinal against a depleted Spain. Sweden threatened to pose a sterner test still. It is not yet a year since the Swedes had competed in the Olympic final. Its team is regarded, by no less an authority than the FIFA rankings, as the finest side in Europe.England’s Ellen White. She and her teammates have outscored their Euros opponents by 20-1.John Sibley/ReutersSweden, the world’s second-ranked team, endured its heaviest defeat ever in a European Championship.Matthew Childs/ReutersAnd for a while it seemed as if this might be another calvary. Sweden carved open a glaring opportunity with its first attack of the game. Inside the first 15 minutes, England had required three fine saves from its goalkeeper, Mary Earps, and the intervention of the crossbar to retain any hope.But while the individual talent at Wiegman’s disposal is, perhaps, only rivaled in this tournament by that of the French, the collective she has crafted is marked by its composure, its serenity, its abiding self-belief. England did not wilt as Sweden battered at its door and pummeled its defenses. It did not allow itself to be overawed, or intimidated, or fretful.Instead, it waited for its opportunity, taking the lead through Beth Mead, the tournament’s leading scorer, a little after half an hour. That might, for a different team, have been the cue to sit back, to hunch its shoulders and grit its teeth. But that is not Wiegman’s way, and so it is not England’s, either.At halftime, the stadium announcer declared that, “as things stand, England is going to the final.” It felt just a little hubristic, the sort of pronouncement that might come to be seen as a source of regret, though not for long. Within four minutes of the start of the second half, Lucy Bronze had doubled the lead, her header drifting achingly slowly past Lindahl’s dive.That goal would, in hindsight, have been enough, but at the time it was not, not enough to be sure. Only with Russo’s improvisational, instinctive brilliance could the crowd — could the players — relax. A few minutes later, Fran Kirby, England’s creative heartbeat, ran through on goal. She, too, was in one of the biggest games of her career. She, too, knew this was serious.But still she chose the indulgent option, lofting a delicate, arcing chip just beyond Lindahl’s grasp, deflecting off her gloves into the net behind her. It was the sort of thing a player tries when they are, despite the situation in which they find themselves, having fun.Sarina Wiegman, who led the Netherlands to the Euros title on home soil in 2017, is one win from doing the same for England.Molly Darlington/ReutersAfter the final whistle, the players lingered on the field. They took the applause from all four corners of the stadium. They listened as all of soccer’s great standards — Dua Lipa and Dana International and the White Stripes — crackled from the speakers.Ellen White, the striker, led the crowd in a chorus of “Sweet Caroline,” her eyes wide and her smile almost baffled. Wiegman, regarded even by her squad as an austere, demanding presence, bounced and jumped and danced with the players. England had been in the semifinals of a major international tournament, and not only had it won, but it had enjoyed itself, and nobody wanted to let that feeling go. More