“Amidst a morass of muddling mediocrity and frustration”

Notes on the USWNT's 1-0 defeat of Japan in the Olympic quarterfinal. Ample quotes from Hayes at the Parc des Princes on Rodman, Japan, her (lack of) subs, as well as quotes from Rodman on her game.

— Lyon

Ask any of the USWNT’s four gold medal winning teams. Ultimate victory requires a precipitous combination of things. 

One of the things it requires is talent. This generation checks that box. Another is focus, the ability to greet each moment of the game with unwavering poise, and in a broader context, block out all the noise. Luck will certainly help you. Though it won’t bake the whole cake. Mentality has long been their wildcard weapon of choice. 

And, yes, sometimes ultimate victory requires the ability to suffer through “a morass of muddling mediocrity and frustration”, as the broadcast aptly put it, then still find a result from the game.   

Saturday at the Parc des Princes in Paris, before a vocal crowd filled with fans of various teams (a healthy helping of neutrals arrived to observe what happens next), the US suffered through 120+ minutes of attrition based soccer against a well-organized Japan team that challenged their setup and stymied their attack.

In extra time, Trinity Rodman sliced through the stalemate with her third goal of the tournament, providing the miraculous match-winner and what she’d later described to us as the best moment of her career. 

It wasn’t the beautiful game so much as the perseverance game, with a Rodman spark of magic to break it. Past medal-winning teams often needed that too.