Story: US Women's Soccer Gold Medal a True Team Efforthttp://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/olympics/2012/writers/grant_wahl/08/09/hope-solo-alex-morgan-us-womens-soccer-gold/index.html
U.S. women's fourth gold medal a team effort in the truest sense | Story Highlights In defeating Japan 2-1, Team USA captured its fourth gold medal in five OlympicsStars such as Hope Solo, Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan contributed to the gold ...... but each player, in ways large and small, contributed to Olympic championship |
They weren't a defensive fortress, but the U.S.'s entertaining style led it to the gold medal.
Chuck Myers/Mct/MCT/ZUMAPRESS.com
LONDON--When the final whistle blew, they came together on hallowed soccer ground, Wembley Stadium, with the cheers of more than 80,000 fans thundering in their ears. The gold medalists of the U.S. women's soccer team had achieved a feat that consumed their thoughts for every day of the past year. And this time, when victory came, they did not split in different directions to celebrate. Everyone -- the 11 players on the field, the seven more on the bench and the coaching staff -- met as one in the center of the field.
United States 2, Japan 1. For the fourth time in five Olympics, the U.S. had won the gold medal. And by beating Japan, the team that snatched their World Cup dream last year, the Americans got a measure of redemption against their worthy and respected rivals. If the past two major tournaments were the start of an epic sporting rivalry, please bring us more in the years to come.
If you were watching from the upper reaches of Wembley with the Olympic-record crowd for women's soccer, all you saw was a single mass of U.S. players celebrating on the field. But eventually you could pick out the individual players, each one of whom played a role in earning the medal that would soon be around their necks.
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There was Carli Lloyd, the New Jersey-bred midfielder, who scored both U.S. goals: One on a daring run into the box, throwing her head onto Alex Morgan's first-half cross, and the other on a blistering shot from distance in the second half. Lloyd, 30, has a habit of coming up big in the Olympic final, having scored the game-winner against Brazil in Beijing four years ago, but her journey in this tournament was harder than it had been in that one.
Just before the Olympics, Lloyd had lost her starting central-midfield job to Lauren Cheney. It was a blow, to say the least. Lloyd had started in all the major tournaments going back to the 2007 World Cup. But she didn't complain, didn't sulk. "When someone tells me I'm not good enough to start, I'm going to prove them wrong," she said after the game.
And so she did. In the first game of the Olympics, midfielder Shannon Boxx went down with an injury early on against France. Lloyd came onto the field, and she never left for the rest of the tournament. Four goals and six victories later, she did indeed prove her coach, Pia Sundhage, wrong. How do we know this? Because the ego-free Sundhage said so.
"She proved that I was wrong before the Olympics," Sundhage said, a wide smile on her face, "and I'm really happy that she's more clever than I am." Give the coach some credit, though: By inserting Boxx back into the lineup for the gold-medal game in place of Cheney (who had a slight knock and hadn't been very effective), Sundhage gave Lloyd more ability to push forward and score twice.
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There alongside Lloyd was Hope Solo, the world's top goalkeeper, the player who'd been frustrated to give up three goals to Canada and two to France in this tournament. With the pressure at its highest in the final, Solo pulled out her best performance in the Olympics, making two sensational saves to rescue the Americans. One came in the first half, when Solo somehow exploded from her stance to push Yuki Ogimi's shot off the crossbar and out of danger. The second unfolded in the 83rd minute, when Solo faced down Japan's Mana Iwabuchi in a one-on-one encounter in the box.
Four years ago in the Olympic final, Solo had stoned Brazil's Marta in the late stages of regulation, rescuing the game for the Americans. With Iwabuchi in front of her, Solo somehow felt a calmness inside, as if she knew her time had come again. "I knew I had to find a way to make the save," Solo said afterward. "I was pretty confident in the angle of the approach I took. But to make sure even more, I took another two yards off my line to make sure I kept the angle."
Five years ago, after the World Cup drama that divided the team and made Solo an outcast, one U.S. player had crossed the chasm to prevent Solo from being torn from the team forever: Carli Lloyd. During a tension-filled team tour stop in St. Louis, Solo hadn't been allowed to play or train with the team. But Lloyd broke ranks to sit next to Solo on the bench, visit her in her room and join her for meals. "I just knew she was a great person and a phenomenal goalkeeper, and we need her on this team," Lloyd said at the time.
She was right. Solo proved it in 2008, just as she has every year since. Over the years, Solo hasn't changed in many ways. She's still fiery, still a loose cannon, and yet the scars from 2007 have healed.
"This was the first time in my athletic career -- and I've been through a couple major tournaments now -- that it really feels like a team through and through, from player number one through the alternates," Solo said after the game. "We knew anybody could step up and make a difference on this team, whether it's a young player like Kelley O'Hara for the first time in the defense or Tobin Heath or Carli Lloyd."
This was a different team. A special team.
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