Women’s World Cup: United States Loses Knockout Match to Sweden on Penalty Kicks

Sweden advances on a kick that was initially saved by the U.S. goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher but then slipped over the goal line.

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Round of 16

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Fridolina Rolfö

Elin Rubensson

Nathalie Bjorn

Rebecka Blomqvist

Hanna Bennison

Magdalena Eriksson

Lina Hurtig

Andi Sullivan

Lindsey Horan

Kristie Mewis

Megan Rapinoe

Sophia Smith

Alyssa Naeher

Kelley O'Hara

Andrew Das

Even the replay required a second look, so slim was the margin that separated the United States from elimination at the Women’s World Cup on Sunday.

But there it was, if you squinted: years of work, weeks of games and almost three hours of world-class soccer reduced to a single computer-generated image, the ball microscopically over the goal line, and the United States fully, and unequivocally, out of the World Cup.

“We just lost the World Cup by a millimeter,” goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher said. “That’s tough.”

The decision was a stunning end in every possible way. That it gave Sweden a victory in a penalty shootout and a berth in the quarterfinals against Japan almost felt like an afterthought, though surely not to the Swedes.

Yet as they raced off into the corner, delirious in victory, there was so much else to process: soccer’s newfound reliance on technology and video review; the elimination of the United States, the two-time reigning champion ejected from its customary place at the peak of its sport; and the exit from the World Cup, for the final time, of the American star Megan Rapinoe, the athlete and activist who had hoped to go out a three-time champion but will instead fly home ruing her own missed penalty kick, a cruel twist of fate she labeled “a sick joke.”

The defeat may one day be seen as a watershed moment for women’s soccer, the moment when the United States, the most successful and most decorated team in the sport’s history, surrendered its decades of primacy once and for all. Close watchers of the sport have seen that moment coming for a while. Investments in Europe especially but elsewhere, too, have been narrowing that gap for years. Rising powers like Spain, England and the Netherlands — but also older ones like Sweden and Germany — no longer shudder at the sight of the Americans on the other side.

New challengers are emerging wherever one looks. Even if it loses on Tuesday, Jamaica will have advanced at least as far as the United States this year, as will three African teams, including Morocco, which played its first game in the tournament only last month.

That growth will only continue, while the United States navigates an awkward transition between a past of stars like Rapinoe and Alex Morgan and a future studded with talent but short on experience, tradition and championship pedigree. No U.S. team had ever failed to make at least the semifinals until Sunday. And for a few hours in the cold Melbourne night, it appeared the current team might yet make a championship run once again.

For hours, the United States and Sweden had circled each other like prizefighters painting a World Cup classic. They had pushed and shoved, taken shots and saved them, tested their nerve to the limit. And then, after two halves and two extra periods with no goals, they went to a penalty shootout to decide a winner. Yet they still could not be separated until the final shot gave Sweden a 5-4 edge on penalties.

Shot followed shot, save was matched by save, miss was followed by miss. And then Kelley O’Hara, the seventh American to step up to the spot, hit the right post with her attempt, and Lina Hurtig, the seventh Swede, sent hers low and hard to Naeher’s right.

Naeher got to the ball but could only parry it high into the air. As it began to descend, she saw, to her horror, that it was tumbling back toward her goal instead of away. Naeher reached back and swatted at it a second time. She was sure she had batted it clear, and sprung to her feet waving a finger at the referee to insist she had been successful.

Unsure if she was right, the players and the crowd held their breath. The French referee, Stéphanie Frappart, double-checked. The goal was given. The Swedes sprinted away. The Americans froze where they stood.

The tears flowed immediately. From Sophia Smith, the young forward who had missed a chance to win it for the United States, and from Rapinoe, who had sent her shot over the crossbar. Other players were soon crying, too, too many to count. The rest just stared off into the distance, or into the ground, looking, perhaps, for an alternate plane where what they had just seen had not happened.

“Unfortunately, soccer can be cruel sometimes,” Coach Vlatko Andonovski of the United States said. He may soon find out just how much.

This finish — eliminated in the round of 16 — will go down as the worst in World Cup history for the U.S. women’s national team, a forgettable denouement to a tournament in which the U.S. team won only once in four games, scored in only two of them, and only in its final game looked like the contender it believed itself to be.

Andonovski will surely get much of the blame for that. But it will be a shared grief for a team that never really found its footing, did not score nearly enough, and now will head home wondering what might have been.

Andonovski declined to discuss his future, saying it would be “selfish” to think about what the defeat means for him on such a devastating night. “I see the players in tears, and it hurts,” he said. “And that’s all I can think about.”

Smith, 22, and young stars like forward Trinity Rodman and defender Naomi Girma, will have more World Cups. Rapinoe, 38, will not. She announced before the tournament that this would be her last dance, and it will be her most frustrating. Reduced to a substitute, she had come on in extra time and searched, along with everyone else on both teams, for some moment of magic that would change the ending in their favor.

It could have been different. Naeher had kept the Americans in the game with steady work and a series of solid saves. At the other end, her counterpart, Zecira Musovic, had been even better: The Americans outshot Sweden by more than double, and had put 11 of those attempts on goal to Sweden’s one. But time and again, Musovic denied them, reaching out to parry stinging shots or dangerous chances. She pushed away a rocketed right-footer from Lindsey Horan in the 53rd minute and a close-range header from Morgan in the 88th.

Asked if she had played the game of her life — a common assessment from all sides — Musovic parried that, too. “It was a good game,” she said, “from all of us.”

Thanks to her efforts, and Naeher’s, the game seemed fated to a penalty kick shootout as early as the second half. Still, the teams pushed and probed on a night so tense that even the crowd fell silent for long stretches before it finally awoke in the closing minutes of extra time.

“It feels like a bad dream,” Morgan, one of the American co-captains, said. “I feel like we dominated, but it doesn’t matter,” she added, probably correct on both counts. “We’re going home.”

Sweden will move on to a quarterfinal against Japan and whatever might come after that.

The United States will pack its bags and head off into an uncertain future. Rapinoe will go, and others, including Morgan and defender Julie Ertz, might follow. They and their teammates will leave behind a World Cup that will be memorable, just as all of their previous trips have been.

This time, though, it will be not for what was won, but for what, on a cold night in Melbourne, was lost.

Andrew Das

The U.S. is out of the World Cup in a stunning, stunning conclusion. Lina Hurtig’s penalty was saved by Naeher, but it must have crossed the line because Stephanie Frappart, the French referee, paused, listening to her earpiece, and signaled for a goal.

A replay shows how close it was. Naeher popped the shot in the air and as it fell it crossed the goal line.

What an ending.

Alyssa Naeher nearly kept it out 🧤 pic.twitter.com/DjpatlgCKD

Andrew Das

IT’S OVER! Frappart says it was a goal, and Sweden and Hurtis race to the corner and it’s over!!!!

Andrew Das

Lina Hurtig can win it for Sweden here at 4-4 after that O’Hara miss.

Andrew Das

She MISSES!! Naeher saved it, but she hit it twice after the initial shot, and now the referee is conferring …

Juliet Macur

Hurtig’s goal almost goes in, but it looks like Naeher has saved it. She did not. Sweden wins and the US is out!!!

Andrew Das

Kelley O’Hara for the U.S. sprints to the spot. She wants this.

Andrew Das

She MISSES!!!! Oh dear, off the right post and away.

Juliet Macur

O’Hara is in her fourth World Cup and her shot bounces off the right post. This is crushing for her. She’s been a huge leader for the team here.

Andrew Das

Magdalena Eriksson, a seasoned center back, for Sweden to keep it alive.

Andrew Das

She SCORES! 4-4. How long can this go now?

Juliet Macur

Eriksson’s shot rockets to the upper-right corner and is in!

Andrew Das

Whoa. Naeher steps up for No. 6 for the U.S.

Andrew Das

She SCORES! No doubt. What a moment.

Juliet Macur

Naeher’s shot is straight up the middle and Musovic guesses wrong. Another U.S. goal!

Andrew Das

Hanna Bennison, another sub, to save Sweden.

Andrew Das

She SCORES!! Sweden is even, and we go on! 3-3!!!

Juliet Macur

Finally, a shot goes in. Bennison scores and the Swedes cheer in joy and relief.

Andrew Das

Sophia Smith with the long walk and the chance to win it.

Andrew Das

She MISSES too! Over the bar to the right. Nerves? She took a looooong time over the ball.

Juliet Macur

Sophia Smith could’ve ended this, but misses, too. It’s wild in here!

Andrew Das

Blomqvist, the Sweden sub, to try to tie it.

Andrew Das

She MISSES! Or rather, Naeher saves it!!!! The U.S. can win it here.

Juliet Macur

Blomqvist shoots and Naeher SAVES IT!!!

Andrew Das

At 3-2, Rapinoe steps up to drive in the knife.

Andrew Das

She MISSES!! Sends it over the bar the other way. What a crushing blow for her in her final World Cup.

Juliet Macur

Rapinoe is smiling after her shot sails way over the net. She has made so many penalty shots for the U.S. — but not this time.

Andrew Das

Nathalie Bjorn, the right back, for Sweden.

Andrew Das

She MISSES!!! Her shot sails over the bar after Naeher guesses right again.

Juliet Macur

Bjorn buries her head in her hands after she misses. The U.S. has a chance here!

Andrew Das

Kristie Mewis for the U.S., and for the lead.

Andrew Das

Deep breath, she SCORES. 3-2 for the U.S. And the tension mounts.

Andrew Das

Elin Rubensson for Sweden to tie it.

Andrew Das

She SCORES, past Naeher just where Horan went.

Juliet Macur

Rubensson scores and I swear that the crowd is getting louder every time someone scores.

Andrew Das

Horan is second for the U.S.

Andrew Das

She SCORES. Dead perfect to the left side.

Andrew Das

Fridolina Rolfo is up first for Sweden against Naeher.

Andrew Das

She SCORES, into the right-side netting. Great penalty.

Juliet Macur

Sullivan nails it and pumps her left fist as the crowd chants, “USA! USA!” Finally, it has come alive here.

Andrew Das

She SCORES, lower left past Musovic.

Andrew Das

The U.S. will shoot first. It’s Andi Sullivan.

Andrew Das

The shootout will take place in front of a horde of Sweden fans behind the north goal. Or at least I think it’s north. I’m not from here.

Juliet Macur

“Welcome to the Jungle” is blasting in the stadium, and now the seagulls are back and on the field, as well as flying all above it. It’s surreal here. Ready for PKs!

Andrew Das

Alyssa Naeher will not be fazed by this. She has won these games single-handedly before. Her team, having run its legs off, will need a performance like the one she turned in to beat the Netherlands at the Tokyo Olympics.

Juliet Macur

Here we go, folks — penalty kicks will determine the winner. The 27,706 fans in the stands who have been sitting here in the cold for 120 minutes are going to be in for a treat.

Andrew Das

Andonovski is giving a penalty kick pep talk like his job depends on it. It might.

Andrew Das

FULL TIME. We go to penalties. And one of the tournament’s best teams will be out when they’re over.

Juliet Macur

I am a terrible interpreter of stadium chants and could not for the life of me understand what one entire end of the stadium was chanting. It was two syllables and loud. And then, duh, it dawned on me: It was "SWE-DEN! SWE-DEN!" Those fans are wearing blue and should be wearing yellow, darn it.

Andrew Das

One minute of added time … tick, tick, tick …

Andrew Das

She’s already checking her watch as Sweden lingers over a goal kick.

Andrew Das

120′ Final subs for the U.S. ahead of penalties: Kelley O’Hara for Fox, and Kristie Mewis for an absolutely spent Emily Sonnett, who was a surprise inclusion but played heroically all night.

Andrew Das

119′ Yellow for Ertz, who breaks up a quick Sweden counter by (accidentally? maybe?) swinging a hand into the face of Blomqvist on the sideline. The Sweden coaches protest, and Frappart, the referee, quickly shows the card. But the chance died with the foul, so there’s that.

Andrew Das

117′ Another Williams cross, but it passes behind one, then two, then three U.S. attackers. Not the precision the Americans need at this moment, but maybe what can be expected from two exhausted teams trying desperately to settle this before it goes to the lottery of penalties in a few minutes.

Andrew Das

113′ The U.S. may be forced into a change now. Fox is down, and hurting, and exhausted. But she struggles to her feet and we continue.

Andrew Das

112′ Another Sweden sub: Blomqvist for Blackstenius, who ran a lot but didn’t create the danger one might have expected from her. Interesting change, as she won’t be available for penalties now. Andonovski, meanwhile, has gone full Norman Dale: “My team’s on the floor.”

Andrew Das

111′ Smith, then Williams, tried to take shots off the second wave of a U.S. attack. Smith’s is blocked. Williams mis-hits hers. Both put their hands to their face.

Andrew Das

107′ Wow. Gorgeous first touch by Smith, taking a rifled Williams cross right out of the air into her path. Her shot is going straight toward the right post, but Musovic — again, not a recording — punches it wide.

Andrew Das

END OF FIRST EXTRA PERIOD. Hi, I’m a penalty kick shootout. You will probably meet me soon.

Andrew Das

105′ Nearing the end of the first extra period and we’re still closer to penalties than a goal, it seems.

Juliet Macur

The Swedes look absolutely determined to keep the Americans from scoring. And every time they block their shots, they are so cool about it and make it look so easy.

Andrew Das

101′ MORE DRAMA: Smith springs Williams, who shoots from the right. Musovic parries yet again, leaving the ball right at Rapinoe’s feet, but she had overrun it and couldn’t get back to it to shoot. Horan corrals the loose ball but has her shot headed out for a corner.

Andrew Das

The corner, alas if you’re the U.S., is wasted.

Andrew Das

100′ Looks like Rapinoe will take up her usual position on the left wing, with Smith pushed into the center, in the spot vacated by Morgan.

Juliet Macur

Megan Rapinoe is on her way in. She hugs Coach Vlatko Andonovski, runs her hands through her blue hair and is ready. The crowd roars as she jogs out to the field. Alex Morgan, who had many good chances to no avail, is out.

Andrew Das

The two goalkeepers, Alyssa Naeher and Zecira Musovic, were the two best players on the field for 90 minutes, so perhaps it’s no surprise that we’re heading to extra time with the score tied, 0-0.

The United States will rue its missed chances in the second half, particularly Alex Morgan’s free header in the 89th minute. Score there and she rewrites the story of her World Cup, and her team’s. But Musovic was there — again — to push it aside, just as she did with Lindsey Horan’s rocketed right-footer early in the half.

It’s going to take something special, or something awful or opportunistic, to settle this one. Will it be a bounce? A deflection? Or a bit of brilliance? We have 30 minutes to find out.

Andrew Das

There is a tension inside Melbourne Rectangular Stadium that is hard to ignore, or to explain. Not the players; they’re used to this. It’s the fans, who seem to be agonizing so much about this game — the stakes, the consequences, the microscopic gap between the teams — that they keep forgetting to cheer.

It is so tense, in fact, that it’s quite easy to hear players shouting out defensive assignments and asking for passes. It’s quiet, that is, until there’s a chance, when the noise bursts out like a firework.

Both teams will be pleased with that half, but for different reasons. Sweden will like what it has been able to do on corners, and will probably think the next one or two might yield a goal. The United States will like the score and its ability to hold its own with two defensive midfielders and a back line that has been its strength in all of its games.

But the U.S. front line — save a few individual efforts by Trinity Rodman and Sophia Smith — still looks disconnected and inefficient with its attacks. And the Americans often look as if they’re playing too slowly, too carefully to pull the Sweden defense out of position and actually create a few gaps to exploit.

Maybe there’s a goal coming — Rodman has had several good looks, and Sweden’s corners are a handful — and maybe that’ll open up the game. Or maybe we should all just settle in for trench warfare, for low-risk soccer, and for extra time.

Andrew Das

The only thing more prevalent this week than hand-wringing about the fate of the United States has been talk of its history against Sweden.

The United States and Sweden are meeting in the World Cup for the seventh time, and for the sixth tournament in a row. If there have been two certainties at the World Cup over the past two decades, in fact, it’s that Marta will play for Brazil and the United States will play Sweden.

That history is a hopeful one for the United States, which has four wins, one loss and a draw:

1991: United States 3, Sweden 2

2003: United States 3, Sweden 1

2007: United States 2, Sweden 0

2011: Sweden 2, United States 1

2015: United States 0, Sweden 0

2019: United States 2, Sweden 0

But Sweden will take heart in two other recent meetings: a victory at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, and another in their most recent major tournament collision at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Sweden played the U.S. off the field that day, a defeat that sent Vlatko Andonovski and his team reeling into damage control and began the roster revamp that continues today.

Oskar Garcia

The last time Japan had a player score as much as Hinata Miyazawa in a World Cup, it won the tournament outright. That was in 2011, when the Japanese team led by Homare Sawa beat the United States in a penalty shootout in the final.

Of course, much has changed in 12 years. The U.S. won the next two World Cups — and beat the Japanese to do it in 2015. Japan faded a bit, at least relative to the other powers in the sport. Ahead of this tournament, the U.S. was No. 1 and Sweden was No. 3 in FIFA’s rankings, with Japan more modestly at No. 11.

But at this tournament, no team has put together a better stretch of games. After cruising through its group, Japan won its round-of-16 matchup against Norway on Saturday to seal its seat in the quarterfinal in its portion of the single-elimination bracket.

Some of Japan’s success, to be sure, is because of its attacking style, an eye-catching relentlessness that it seemed to somehow use defensively against a Norway team that struggled to sustain its offense.

It was Miyazawa’s goal that dampened the presence of Ada Hegerberg, the 2018 Ballon D’Or winner. Hegerberg entered the game with roughly 20 minutes left as Norway got more aggressive and sought a tying goal.

Japan gave up its first goal of this tournament in this game, and had scored 11 in its three group-stage games. In a way, Norway tying it at 1 was the first serious challenge for Japan during its run.

”Among us there were only positive words. Even when it became 1-1, no one has a negative mood,” said Risa Shimizu, who broke the tie. “We could play in a very positive way.”

Things are likely to get much more challenging for Japan, with the quarterfinal against the U.S.-Sweden winner scheduled for Friday. But Japan can watch this game knowing that it has a spot in the next one, and that it is showing itself to be a tough out among the eight teams that will be left after this round.

Andrew Das

United States Coach Vlatko Andonovski knew he would have to make at least one change against Sweden since Rose Lavelle was suspended after receiving two yellow cards in the group stage. His solution might be more invasive than expected.

Up front, Trinity Rodman is restored to the lineup after being replaced by Lynn Williams against Portugal. It’s Emily Sonnett who swaps in for Lavelle, but she is listed as a defender. Julie Ertz, whose central-defense partnership with Naomi Girma has been the bright spot of the team’s performances — the U.S. allowed only a single goal in the group stage — is listed as a midfielder.

Hmmmmmm.

The Round of 16 XI 🇺🇸#USWNT x @Visa pic.twitter.com/ImXEf9FcAJ

Ertz seems thrilled about the move in the photo above, and in reality it might not be as big a tactical shift as it appears at first glance. Lindsey Horan should shift into the No. 10 role vacated by Lavelle, with Ertz and Andi Sullivan behind her in a 4-2-1-3 formation.

We’ll have to see how the U.S. lines up at kickoff. Still, it is a curious move by Andonovski to rearrange his back line ahead of a game with stakes as high as this one.

Andrew Das

Must-win games are nothing new for the United States women’s national team. Must-win is the team’s resting state. The players know it. Their fans demand it. The world, for decades, has expected it.

But as the United States takes the field against Sweden in the round of 16 of the World Cup on Sunday, must-win feels less like the team’s usual confident mind-set and more like a hope, the sense of a team leaning into its history and its muscle memory and hoping that those things will, one more time, be enough.

To say this World Cup has not gone as the United States expects is an understatement. It won its opening game comfortably but not easily. It tied its second and then its third. It has flirted close — only an inch or two away, really — with disaster. So the reality that the Americans’ World Cup could end, suddenly and a little bit shockingly, with a loss to Sweden has hung in the air for days. Defeat would produce the worst finish in the history of a U.S. program that has dominated this tournament like no other. But teams, and especially Swedish ones, look past the United States at their peril.

Sweden will be no stranger to the Americans, of course. The teams are meeting in their sixth straight World Cup, a head-to-head the U.S. has dominated, but only two years after the Swedes took the United States apart at the Tokyo Olympics. On Saturday, both sides studiously avoided discussing either their past or their predictions.

“You must never, ever underestimate the U.S. team,” Sweden forward Kosovare Asllani said. “What’s happened against Sweden in the past is in the past,” U.S. forward Alex Morgan replied, returning serve.

Both sides, though, are well aware of what is plain to see: Sweden, the winner of all three of its games so far, has the momentum and the talent and the hard-won experience to keep that going. The United States, weakened by the absence of both the suspended Rose Lavelle and its customary swagger, has been cast in an unfamiliar, more teetering role.

The Americans have played, well, fine at this World Cup. But they resemble more of an all-star team than a champion: a collection of talent thrown together late but lacking cohesion or, from the outside, a tactical plan everyone understands. They stand on the precipice of elimination certain of nothing and capable of anything.

That is worth remembering amid the skepticism. The United States has, after all, stared into the abyss at the World Cup before and lived to tell the tale. It could all start to click at any moment, if the goals appears, if the swagger returns.

That will have to happen today, though, or its World Cup could end here. Megan Rapinoe’s World Cup career could end here. Vlatko Andonovski’s tenure as coach might end here.

An era, really, could end here. Or a revival could start. Don’t forget that. Sweden won’t.

Desperation, any athlete can tell you, can be a powerful motivator. Sweden will bring its best shot. But to paraphrase the old saying — was it Emerson or Omar Little? — if you come at the queen, you better not miss.

Claire Fahy

Reporting from San Jose, Calif.

Alex Morgan can easily rattle off the colors of the headbands worn by her United States teammates.

She wears pink, as does Rose Lavelle. Sophia Smith likes black. Julie Ertz prefers a shade closer to Tiffany blue. Lindsey Horan wears red, mostly because Morgan doesn’t.

“One of the first times I wore pink, someone said I’m trying to copy Alex Morgan,” Horan said.

Morgan laughed. “I never knew that,” she said.

Soccer’s favorite headband, though, isn’t a headband at all. The sheer colored strips keeping some of the world’s best athletes’ hair in place is actually what is known as pre-wrap — a thin, stretchy medical gauze intended to be wrapped around injured knees or ankles before they are taped, in part to protect the skin.

And while both men and women long ago co-opted the athletic dressing for a more prominent purpose in their hair, Morgan and other women’s soccer players have turned pre-wrap into a symbol of women’s sports — and soccer in particular — to accent their team kits and express individuality on the field.

“There is a kind of unique, almost strategic use of pre-wrap in women’s soccer,” said Rachel Allison, a sociology professor at Mississippi State who has studied how the sport has marketed itself. “Obviously, wearing the headband can be functional in terms of holding your hair back while you’re playing the sport, but I think it’s become far more than that.”

Morgan, for example, began wearing pink pre-wrap so that her parents could pick her out in a sea of ponytails on the soccer field, and later chose the color to honor her mother-in-law, who is a breast cancer survivor. Morgan is now even sponsored by one of the primary manufacturers of pre-wrap, Mueller Sports Medicine.

“These are forms of individual self expression, but they’re also really important to how we’re marketing women’s sport,” Allison said. “They become part of the storytelling that we do around who these women are, not only as players, but also people in ways that help to connect to the audience.”

The pre-wrap features prominently in the branding of the players, including how they are portrayed in various merchandise. Before the tournament, goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher shared a picture of a figurine clipped to her bag that depicted Becky Sauerbrunn, the defender and former captain of the U.S. team who is out of the World Cup with a foot injury, complete with a pink strip across her forehead.

🥹 pic.twitter.com/PE8qz7wKsa

Brett Mueller, the chief executive of Mueller Sports Medicine, said the company originally began producing pre-wrap in the 1970s for use in the N.F.L. and N.B.A., but it became popular as a hair accessory for women and girls after referees said they couldn’t wear hard plastic barrettes or clips because of injury risks. Quickly, he said, his company had to expand its color offerings from the original tan, first to popular school colors and then to a brighter, wider range — including pink.

“It’s exciting that these athletes — and our team is so good, too — are using our product,” Mueller said, adding: “But we didn’t design it for that.”

Allison said that when she played college soccer at Grinnell College in Iowa, where she graduated in 2007, a couple of her teammates wore the gauzy headbands. Many more people do now, she said.

“It’s not uncommon to see other people, especially girls or young women, wearing pre-wrap when they’re in the stands watching,” Allison said. “It’s a way for them to symbolize their fandom.”

There are two camps of pre-wrap headbands: those who roll it into thin, tubular strands that stand up slightly on their heads, like Morgan and Horan, and those who spread it flat on top of their hair, like Smith and Ertz. The method matters — midfielder Rose Lavelle wears pink pre-wrap, but as a member of Team Flat, she’s safe from comparisons to Morgan.

And while it’s most obvious in the players’ hair, Morgan said the team also uses pre-wrap for its originally intended purpose: underneath their shin guards and also to tape up ankles.

“Pre-wrap is everywhere,” Morgan said. “You look in the bins, and it’s endless pre-wrap.”

Rory Smith

Reporting from Sydney, Australia.

Thembi Kgatlana had time to pull off one more trick, to take one more shot, to send one more jolt of electricity through the crowd. She had been running, by that stage, for roughly 100 minutes, mounting what appeared at times to be a fearsome, one-woman campaign to keep South Africa in the Women’s World Cup for as long as possible.

By that stage, even she would have conceded that it was over. The Netherlands had a two-goal lead, and somewhere in the region of 30 seconds to survive. But Kgatlana, as she had already amply proved in this tournament, does not believe in stopping.

And so she picked up the ball, midway inside the Dutch half, and set out to “cause havoc,” as she put it, once more. First, she spun and writhed and twisted away from a defender, leaving her sprawled on the turf.

Then, her line of sight momentarily clear, she lined up to shoot from 25 yards. Stefanie van der Gragt stepped in the way of the shot. It caught her square in the face. The ball’s altered trajectory might have taken it anywhere. This time, it slithered just wide of Daphne van Domselaar’s goal.

It was that sort of game for South Africa, the kind of occasion when any number of things might have gone ever so slightly differently and a whole other world might have opened up. The Netherlands, in the end, went through to the quarterfinals, where Spain lies in wait in Wellington, New Zealand.

From the raw facts of the game, it might be tempting to assume that conclusion was inevitable from the moment Jill Roord, a yard from goal, gently nudged the Dutch ahead after just nine minutes. Largely thanks to Kgatlana, though, it did not feel like that in the slightest.

At times, particularly in the first half, she had seemed to take the idea of South Africa’s elimination as a personal affront. She took the fight to the Dutch almost single-handedly, wresting control of the game, becoming its central character, tormenting the defenders tasked with marking her, testing van Domselaar again and again and again.

Kgatlana had already left an indelible mark on the tournament — and on South African soccer, for that matter — with the last-gasp goal that had defeated Italy and brought Coach Desiree Ellis’s South Africa team here, to the first knockout game in the country’s soccer history. The circumstances in which she had done so, in the midst of intense personal grief, had made it not just a World Cup underdog story, but a parable of the power of enduring determination.

She was not, then, likely to go quietly. She might, had things been only marginally, fractionally, microscopically different, have scored two or three or four in the opening phase of the game. Once, she rushed her finish. Once, the ball did not quite fall exactly when she might have liked. Twice, van Domselaar shot out a leg at just the right time. “The chances we created should have put us out of sight,” Ellis said.

At no point could the Dutch relax: Kgatlana was always there, on the shoulder of one central defender or another, lurking, waiting, and then bursting through, panic following in her wake. “They did not know how to deal with us,” she said. “The game plan they had at the start did not work. They had to sit down and think about how to change so they could handle us.”

Even after Lineth Beerensteyn doubled the Netherlands’ lead, her speculative effort squirming from Kaylin Swart’s grasp, the goalkeeper’s head bowing and heart breaking as she turned to see it bobble over the line, there was no rest, no quarter.

The South Africans had only had three days’ rest to prepare for this game — including travel from New Zealand, something that Kgatlana felt cost the team — but even as the lactic acid rose and the legs started to ache, they kept coming. The only thing that could stop Kgatlana, it turned out, was the final whistle.

At that moment, the Dutch players lifted their arms in jubilation and, in no small measure, relief. Some of their South African counterparts, their hopes ended and their lungs emptied, sank to their knees. Kgatlana did not. She stayed standing, congratulating her opponents, commiserating with her teammates.

She was disappointed, of course, but she was proud, too. Not just of how South Africa had played here, and of the test they had posed to the Dutch — “If they believed they are better than us, we had to make them prove it on the field; we did that,” she said — but of all they had achieved over the past three weeks, too. South Africa’s stay might be over. But it has shown, in its time here, that there is no doubt where it belongs.

Andrew Das

Reporting from Melbourne, Australia

The Sweden players Fridolina Rolfo and Kosovare Asllani were, not surprisingly, well rehearsed.

They were excited to be facing the United States again at a major tournament. They knew not to ever, ever underestimate the Americans. They expected a good, tough game.

“We love these do-or-die games,” Asllani said. But talk of momentum or revenge after a string of past defeats against the U.S., or lingering confidence from a victory against the Americans at the Tokyo Olympics? No chance.

“We have good memories from earlier, from the Olympics,” Asllani added, “but it’s a lot of years ago. It doesn’t matter now.”

Their coach, Peter Gerhardsson, has led Sweden since 2017. So he was there for the U.S. victory at the 2019 World Cup, and the Swedish one at the Tokyo Games. But when questions floated in asking him to wander down memory lane, or to discuss the Americans’ relatively middling results in the group stage, he batted them away.

“I don’t know what the U.S. thinks about their performance so far,” he said, “And I don’t care about it.”

“We have a possibility to win the game,” he added. “That’s the most important thing to me and my team.”

History, he said, would have no impact on Sunday’s game in Melbourne. “Football is interesting because you can talk about self confidence, and you can be very good, and you talk about revenge, and the underdog mentality,” Gerhardsson said. “For me, that’s not what’s going to make a difference in what happens tomorrow. It’s the players who are going to play.”

Juliet Macur

Reporting from Auckland, New Zealand

In the days since the United States team narrowly avoided an embarrassing early elimination from the Women’s World Cup, Lindsey Horan, its co-captain, has been working the room.

Horan wants a word, with many of the team’s veterans but especially the 14 World Cup rookies. So she has been tapping teammates on their shoulders and knocking on their hotel room doors and pulling them aside in training. Hey, she might say, can we chat for a few minutes?

The message Horan has taken to every player in the dressing room is a simple one. Ignore “the noise” from critics of the team’s play. Embrace the high expectations that shadow the U.S. team. Remember why you started playing this game in the first place.

“Find the joy,” Horan says, and the team will find its way.

Perhaps as much as any U.S. player, Horan, who was named co-captain less than a month ago, has shouldered the burden of its uneven performances at this World Cup. Much has gone wrong, she admitted on Thursday, days before the United States will face Sweden in a round-of-16 match in Melbourne that will end the World Cup for one of them. But she has seen good things, too. And she has seen enough to know it can all snap back into place quickly. Because it has before.