Women's World Cup 2012

[morphsci]

Congratulations to the US women's soccer team on perhaps the greatest comeback victory I can remember in recent history. It is gratifying to see grit, determination and raw talent win out over terrible (horrendous) refereeing and egregious diving. I only hope that the referee is not allowed to call a FIFA match for the rest of humanity's existence.

And just to put the exclamation mark on it the president of the university was driving by as Karen was doing her Brandy Chastain in our driveway. It was nice of him to wave.

[HeadphoneAddict]

That's pretty funny. Sports bra and all?

[morphsci]

That's pretty funny. Sports bra and all?

Absolutely.

[dsavitsk]

I turned it on at 1'19" and almost turned it right off -- glad I didn't.

[tkam]

What a truly amazing game! Congrats to the US Womens Team

[purk]

Sadly they couldn't go all the way. The Japanese player outplayed them at the end. They may have celebrated little too early both times.

Edited July 19, 2011 by purk

[morphsci]

The first goal to tie at 1-1 was not Japan playing that well as a massive FUBAR by the USA defense. But congrats to the Japanese women for playing a pretty much flawless game and never giving up

[shellylh]

@Jim: Agreed and agreed.

[Voltron]

@Shelly: Agreed to cover all of your agreeds. That last attempt at a clearing kick right back into the center was unbelievably lame. They were so solid otherwise, and other than the penalty kicks.

[Grahame]

Your Team Loses on Penalties, in the World Cup?

You may now have some insight in to what it feels like to be an Englander, and one of our less auspicious traditions (e.g a Google search for "England lose on penalties" yields About 5,180,000 results )

I heard an interesting NPR report on the magnitude of what Japan managed to achieve

PESCA: This is where the great sports narrative should have kicked in, where the David and Goliath story should have come to pass. But you know what? It did. Only the U.S. wasn't David.

Think about it: One of these two teams was the greatest women's soccer power in history. The other had never won a game in group play before this year. One of these teams had never lost in 25 previous matches against the other. One of these teams comes from a nation where soccer is the most popular team sport among girls; the other comes from a country where only 25,000 girls played the game as of 2006.

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/18/138462422/world-cup-u-s-loses-to-japan-on-penalty-kicks

Something to lift the nations spirits after the Earthquake / Tsunami .

[recstar24]

I know the word "choke" is overused in sports, but this is massive choke and failure for team USA. The score should have been 4-1 USA. I am also disappointed in the sports critics taking it easy on the women's team, helps to be young and pretty I guess.