I missed the game because I don’t have cable service, nor an actual television set (had to cut costs due to impending unemployment), but it sounds like it was a great one.

That was a really good game.  I’m not a huge fan of soccer (or any sports, really), but the husband is a football fiend and he was watching while I was doing homework on the couch and I totally got sucked in.  The US team played on hell of a game today, though, that’s for sure.

Playing winning football for forty some minutes while a player down is pretty hardcore footballing.

I only caught the 2nd half, but it was incredibly impressive.  I’ve never heard a foreign crowd cheer so much for an American soccer team before; those refs were absolutely atrocious.  USA! USA! USA! :D

Title IX has done more for US women than any other government policy in the last 50 years. Discuss.

I think the fact that Marta’s so good and yet resorted to cheap ploys is why.  She became an easy villain.

I prefer women’s soccer to the men’s game. It’s got more scoring, the teams are generally the same over the years (unlike the pro and national men’s teams, which change based on who’s available according to which contract every week,) and it certainly doesn’t hurt that the players tend to be easy on the eye.

I wish the MLS would just start a women’s league. Use most of the same cities, have schedules that ensure each location gets a home game almost every week, and those shared stadiums would get to have the operating costs go down, making it a better bargain for both fans and owners. If any sport can follow a college model, it would be soccer.

The cheap ploy thing definitely hurt Brazil in that game. The penalty kick was earned/deserved, at least the first one, but the mysterious ailment that affected the Brazilian defender at the end of the extra time is probably what gave the US enough time to score that last, very important, goal. That the player got a yellow card for that means little now, but that the US got a goal because of her antics means quite a bit.

Of course there’s women’s sports worth watching - netball and women’s rugby.

We in NZ know nothing of this “soccer” of which you speak.  After our showing at the World Cup, the entire game has been wiped from our consciousness!!  STOP BABBLING AT ME ABOUT THIS NONSENSE!!!!

I’ve been gnashing my teeth all day because I turned it off and went out just before Wambach’s tying goal!!! I’ve been glued to espn.com for an hour, replaying their highlight video over and over. I’m so glad they won and Hope Solo got to be one of the heroes. She’s brutally cool.

@ commenter #1, the entire game was streamed at espn.com and I think the rest will be, too. Great game, totally one-upped Landon Donovan’s 91st-minute goal last year!

3letterjon,

The MLS has its counterpart in the WPS.  It’s just getting off the ground and only has 6 teams at the moment, but I’m hopeful about it.  Go Independence!

@8 Well, New Zealand is the only team that finished the World Cup without a loss. So in a way, New Zealand was really the best team!

Well, New Zealand is the only team that finished the World Cup without a loss. So in a way, New Zealand was really the best team!

Yes that’s absol- no, I’m sorry.

I may be a raving patriot with a loose grasp on reality, but not even I am able to buy that argument.

We in NZ know nothing of this “soccer” of which you speak.  After our showing at the World Cup, the entire game has been wiped from our consciousness!!  STOP BABBLING AT ME ABOUT THIS NONSENSE!!!!

Wow. Hope the All-Blacks don’t blow the next few tests. The Southern Hemisphere might not tolerate the resulting disaster.

I missed the game but am watching a late-night replay now, just in time to catch the red card and penalty kick. Man, that was a bullshit card. And I speak as a former soccer ref.

Since I respect the good work you do on behalf of the lunatic fringe, it would be an oversight not to invite you to the ‘party’.

http://thetimchannel.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/attack-of-the-american-girlyban/

And try to at least smile when you read it.  Nothing pleases a man like seeing a lady smile.

Enjoy.

I’m a soccer/football fan, but I missed out on watching this tournament for a number of reasons, and I’m really sorry about missing that final. However, Amanda’s comment about people who think there’s no entertaining women’s sports to watch reminded me of the gold medal match in women’s volleyball at the 2004 Olympics between China and Russia. The Chinese team came back from 0-2 to win 3-2. I can’t remember ever seeing a more exciting, hard-fought, nail-biting sporting competition…

Brazil out, Germany out, a US team Sweden has already beaten once… Dare I hope…?
Of course, Japan will be a hell of a challenge and it will likely be a very frustrating game no matter how it ends.

And Tim, who was touching the line of hate speech without crossing it, has finally broken the thread jack rule.  Bye now!

Ooops. Sorry, quarter-final, not final, match…

Well, I think New Zealand is certainly looking ahead to 9/9. 

Speaking of which, the best chance for the US to get a win in the Rugby World Cup is 15 September, when the US plays Russia.

a US team Sweden has already beaten once

Twice this year.  Once in a friendly.  While I didn’t see either match it does seem like Sweden may match up well with us.

I saw the Japan - Norway game (I think it was Norway) at the gym.  I’ve seen highlights from all the games, but frankly don’t have the time to watch soccer, or any other game that takes that long.  No one in my house watches sports much, especially in the summer when there is too much else to do.

I like women’s soccer, but I root against the US. In 1999, we were subjected to a barrage of publicity and marketing about how the US women’s team were a bunch of underdogs who were taking on the world, and it was completely fake—they were favored and indeed won the tournament—at home—completely unimpressively when Brianna Scurry cheated on a penalty kick in a shootout. (Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong, an actual underdog, won his first Tour de France that year coming back from testicular cancer and got little publicity and a US Postal Service sponsorship—corporate American and the media like safe bets, not true underdogs.) I could never really cotton to the US women’s soccer team after that barrage of cynical corporatist marketing.

And I think the fact that the world is catching up to us is a great sign—women’s soccer is well established in this country, with Title IX and a sports media that at least has some interest in women’s sports, but what we really need is more teams from macho, football-mad soccer powers in the rest of the world. Victories by other countries do a lot more to advance women’s rights than victories by us.

Hopefully we lose, and women’s soccer wins.

Thankfully the United States is the only country in the world that experiences such shameless/cynical bouts of nationalistic excess when it comes to sports. Not to mention the only one that would ever dare root for an athlete who bent the rules.

Additionally, it’s shameful that Americans never got behind Lance Armstrong, a perfectly clean athlete who most certainly not once had a lengthy segment on SportsCenter.

Thankfully the United States is the only country in the world that experiences such shameless/cynical bouts of nationalistic excess when it comes to sports. Not to mention the only one that would ever dare root for an athlete who bent the rules.

Not at all. But it seems to me that it’s also perfectly appropriate to root against teams who barely achieve what they were expected to achieve all along with a huge corporate and media juggernaut, especially when rooting for the other teams might do more for women’s sports worldwide anyway.

To put this in context, here is one of my heroes (and I saw her win her gold medal at the LA Coliseum in 1984):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nawal_El_Moutawakel

I have seen a lot of great US women track and field athletes do great things over the years (often with the help of performance enhancing drugs), but I can’t think of anyone whose victory did as much for the cause of gender equity in sports as Ms. El Moutawakel’s did.

Additionally, it’s shameful that Americans never got behind Lance Armstrong, a perfectly clean athlete who most certainly not once had a lengthy segment on SportsCenter.

They got behind him after he won a couple of Tour de Frances and got bigger name sponsors.

And yes, he turned out to be using PED’s. But since we didn’t know that at the time, he deserved the type of attention that the US WWC team got in 1999 and Sosa and McGwire got a couple of years before.

As much as I hate the penalty kick nonsense, this almost made me like penalty kicks.

I like women’s soccer, but I root against the US. In 1999, we were subjected to a barrage of publicity and marketing about how the US women’s team were a bunch of underdogs who were taking on the world, and it was completely fake—they were favored and indeed won the tournament—at home—completely unimpressively when Brianna Scurry cheated on a penalty kick in a shootout.

Root against the 1999 team, then.  Root against Brianna Scurry.  Don’t visit the sins of the predecessors on the current team.  They fought hard, a woman down, and pulled out an incredible win.

I never liked Maradonna, so I never rooted for Argentina when he played for them, but LIonel Messi is a joy to watch…

In 1999, we were subjected to a barrage of publicity and marketing about how the US women’s team were a bunch of underdogs who were taking on the world

I don’t remember that.  I remember thinking they were favored, and hey, it was largely because we weren’t quite as backwards as a lot of other countries in terms of women and sports.  I don’t know if the US has advanced any since then, but as expected, other countries are catching up. 
Anyway, marketing soured me on Lebron James, but not on women’s soccer.  I figured they deserved whatever exposure they got, even if it was the usual crap fake narrative and dubious commentary that is a fixture of almost any sports media.

Dilan Esper,

The only underdog stuff I remember about the 1999 US Women’s team was the stuff about their sport being an underdog. It still is, which is a shame.

Lance Armstrong got a lot more publicity than Mia Hamm or Brandi Chastain ever did, and his sport is like horseracing: there’s one big event, and a couple more if you bother. The US isn’t big on soccer or women’s soccer, but it’s even less big on bicycling. As for your example of the Muslim woman who hurdled her way to a medal, I think you’re overstating things just a little about the impact that had.

Someday soon, women will be allowed to compete in Olympic ski jumping. That will be another step in the breaking down of walls, but I’d be overstating things to an insane degree if I suggested gender equity would be hugely advanced by such a thing.

Lance Armstrong got a lot more publicity than Mia Hamm or Brandi Chastain ever did, and his sport is like horseracing: there’s one big event, and a couple more if you bother. The US isn’t big on soccer or women’s soccer, but it’s even less big on bicycling. As for your example of the Muslim woman who hurdled her way to a medal, I think you’re overstating things just a little about the impact that had.

Lance Armstrong got publicity, but only later. In 1999, he got very little publicity because he didn’t have any corporate money behind him (which is why the postal service was his sponsor). Sports Illustrated named the 1999 US Women’s Soccer Team “sportsman of the year” for doing something completely expected and not very impressively, over Armstrong for doing something completely unexpected and very impressively.

As for El Moutawakel, talk to any Moroccan about the impact she has had. Among other things, there are numerous women from Muslim countries competing in the Olympic Games because of the doors she opened up. She’s also been a huge agent for gender equity in Morocco and has held several positions of power and influence since the Games.

She’s had 100 times the impact the 1999 US Women’s Soccer team had. The 1999 US Women’s Soccer team was a bunch of talented women barely winning a championship they were supposed to win at home in an event that they had a huge head start over the rest of the world in. Triumphs for US women’s athletics are not signs that women are doing well, they are signs that women are doing poorly and that we need to do more to promote gender equity in the third world.

Thankfully the United States is the only country in the world that experiences such shameless/cynical bouts of nationalistic excess when it comes to sports.

*cough* *COUGH* *HACK* *SPLUTTER*****

Uh, yeah, right.  Darn those Americans and their odd and completely unique nationalistic sports excess.

Dilan,

I hate to get Ugly American here, but someone from Morocco, even a very wonderful and inspirational someone, just isn’t as big a deal as you seem to be suggesting. Hers is a great story, but the very fact that you had to put up a link to say who the hell you were talking about is a pretty big clue that she hasn’t had 100 times the effect of much of anything. Maybe in Morocco, but I’ll wear my Go USA! cap and say that that’s not really such a big deal.

Thanks for telling me her story, and she’s an inspiration to women everywhere. But I think the weight you’re putting to her winning a race is bordering on hyperbole.

Baseball is my #1 sport but I do try to catch women’s soccer and basketball from time to time.  Glad I tuned into that one cause WOW.

The badminton final, last Olympics was awesome.

3letter:

El Moutawakel is a huge figure in international athletics especially in the Muslim world, but since you don’t get the point, let me spell it out:

The US dominating women’s soccer is bad, not good, for women. We have a developed women’s sports architecture here and it gave us a head start on the rest of the world. In many patriarchal societies, women’s sports are in a lot worse shape. And specifically, women’s soccer is underfunded and undersupported in many countries that are traditional soccer powers in Latin America and Europe.

The mark of progress here will be when those traditional soccer powers start getting behind women’s soccer and their teams start dominating the US just like they do in men’s soccer. Then we will know that we are getting somewhere on the issue of gender equality in international soccer. So long as the US keeps doing well, this is an indicator that the rest of the world’s women are getting the shaft.

Dilan,

By your method of keeping score, every Chinese Olympic medal is proof that the Chinese people are free and have great opportunities. And Nicolae Ceaușescu liked women gymnasts for the international prestige.

3letter:

Not at all. But those are ridiculous examples. Most countries do not treat their athletes like virtual slaves in the service of the glory of the state.

And in any event, you will notice I didn’t mention specific countries at all other than the US. And the reason is, the indicator that women are getting a better deal in sports isn’t to see one country dominate an event, whether it is the US or China or anyone else. It’s to see lots of countries field competitive teams, especially countries that were traditionally patriarchal and rejected women’s sports.

The US dominated the first few years of women’s soccer as a major competitive sport because the rest of the world’s women were getting the shaft. I don’t see how that’s really arguable, and China and Romania are complete straw-men being offered up as excuses by someone who would apparently rather see American women continue to win even if it means the rest of the world’s women are denied full and equal access to the sport to make it happen.

No, China and Romania are examples that show that winning women’s teams have no direct corrolation to woman getting full and equal access to sport any more than the US doing so means that US athelets are treated like virtual slaves (though some pro franchizes seem to support that we do for those who want to be professional atheletes - e.g. draft systems).  Other countries fielding competitive teams goes not absolutely or obviously mean that women are getting more oportunities in those countries, not even just in the field of sport.