The National Team

by Caitlin Murray

  With her strong showing in Germany behind her, Morgan met with her coach, Pia Sundhage.

  “Do you remember the conversation we had before the World Cup?” Morgan asked. That was the conversation where Sundhage told Morgan she wasn’t going to coach her into a starting role—she just wanted Morgan to come off the bench and score goals with minimal instruction.

  “Yes, I do,” Sundhage responded. “Of course.”

  “Well, I would like to have the conversation again,” Morgan told her. “I want you to coach me.”

  Sundhage smiled and nodded. “Of course I will,” she said, “because you will soon be in the starting lineup.”

  When the CONCACAF Olympic qualifying tournament arrived in January 2012, Sundhage wasn’t ready to put Morgan in the starting lineup immediately. She started the qualifying tournament conservatively, sticking with what had worked for her previously, and Morgan continued the super-sub role.

  The U.S. opened the tournament in Vancouver, Canada, by demolishing the Dominican Republic, 14–0. Despite the strong start, it included a setback, as Ali Krieger, arguably the best right back in the world at the time, was recklessly tackled, tearing her ACL and ruling her out for the Olympics if the U.S. did qualify.

  The U.S. followed that by beating Guatemala, 13–0. Sydney Leroux, a young Canadian-born striker with American citizenship, scored five goals as a second-half substitute. Leroux did not make the 2011 World Cup roster, but she was proving she belonged at London 2012.

  Next loomed Mexico, the team that had nearly prevented the U.S. from making it into the World Cup less than a year before.

  “We all remember what happened in the qualifiers for the World Cup,” Shannon Boxx said at the time. “Now we’re all looking at this like, Okay, this is our payback. This definitely has been marked on my calendar for a long time as the game I want to win.”

  The match wasn’t even close. The Americans dominated from the first whistle to the last, netting a convincing 4–0 result over Mexico. They followed that up with a 3–0 win over Costa Rica and qualified for the Olympics.

  The final match of the tournament, versus Canada, didn’t actually matter—both teams had qualified for the Olympics—but the Americans wanted to issue a statement of intent for London. Canada was the toughest opponent in this qualifying tournament.

  This was the moment for Pia Sundhage to give Alex Morgan the starting spot they had discussed. While the stakes were low, the competition was high. Morgan finally had the chance to prove she belonged in the starting lineup.

  It took Morgan just four minutes to give the Americans the lead. Abby Wambach flicked a ball up to Morgan with her head, and Morgan ran onto it to get the shot off. Her finish on the ball was superb.

  Morgan ended up playing a role in all of the USA’s goals in a 4–0 win over Canada. She scored two and Wambach scored two, with Morgan assisting on both of them. The pairing of Morgan and Wambach together up top in a 4–4–2 pulled apart the Canadian back line and offered a varied attacking threat.

  From that moment on, Alex Morgan was a starter for the national team. No matter how super, she was no longer considered a sub.

  For Canadian coach John Herdman, who’d hyped the match beforehand and said “the sleeves are off,” the loss seemed humbling. He said he’d gotten his tactics wrong and told reporters: “I apologize for not doing what we could have done tonight.”

  The U.S. and Canadian national teams had already been rivals due to proximity, but the qualifying tournament ratcheted up the tension. On the Canadian broadcast of the tournament, the announcers openly and repeatedly criticized coach Pia Sundhage for celebrating all of the USA’s goals as the scorelines grew increasingly lopsided.

  Leroux, who switched national team allegiance from Canada to the U.S. in 2008 as a teenager, became a focal point of the growing rivalry. She was booed by Canadian fans every time she touched the ball. Some Canadian fans called her “Judas” in chants and sent racially charged messages at her on social media. Leroux, who was a dual-national, was also mixed race—she had a white Canadian mother and a black American father.

  The USA-Canada rivalry hadn’t been much of a soccer rivalry—the U.S. hadn’t lost to Canada in 11 years by that point—but it was fast growing into a rivalry of raw emotion.

  * * *

  When the national team arrived in the United Kingdom for the 2012 Olympics, confidence was at a high. If all went well, the Americans would start off in Scotland and take a winding road through England before they could finally get to London for the gold-medal match.

  But quickly in their tournament opener versus France in Glasgow, it looked like the Americans might never get that far. Within 12 minutes, Gaëtane Thiney fired an absolute rocket past Hope Solo. A minute later, France doubled their lead to 2–0—it was another rocket, this time from Élodie Thomis.

  When Shannon Boxx went down a couple of minutes later with a hamstring pull, the situation had gone from bad to worse. Coach Pia Sundhage looked down the bench and asked Carli Lloyd to take Boxx’s place.

  By that point, Sundhage didn’t have much confidence in Lloyd. Lloyd had lost her starting spot in the central midfield to Boxx and Lauren Cheney because of her inconsistency. She would sometimes have breakout moments—like scoring the game-winner in the gold-medal match of the 2008 Olympics—but she would also have long stretches where she was a turnover machine.

  “If you look at the way she plays in the midfield, she takes a lot of risks,” Sundhage says now. “Sometimes, that’s beautiful. Look at 2008—she scored the winning goal. She can do certain things in the midfield, but she’s always playing on a fine line, so to speak. When she’s not successful, something happens not only to her but to her teammates.”

  “As a coach, I think, Keep on going because sooner or later you will be successful. You’ll beat that player,” Sundhage adds. “Meanwhile, you have players around her thinking, Oh no, she’s losing the ball again or, She’s taking a shot when she shouldn’t. So, it’s such a complex situation.”

  Sundhage was left with no choice in that France game. There wasn’t another central midfielder on the bench—she had to turn to Lloyd. After being told she wasn’t good enough, now the team was counting on her.

  Fortunately for the national team, when the biggest games arrived, Lloyd seemed to find another level. Any poor performances she had in friendlies or minor tournaments seemed to vanish from memory. She relished the moments where she could prove herself to the world.

  It took one minute after Lloyd came on for the Americans to score and start a stunning comeback. They went on to score four unanswered goals, with Lloyd scoring the goal that ended up as the game-winner. The U.S. moved past France, 4–2.

  From there, the Americans were on a roll. They beat Colombia, 3–0, and Megan Rapinoe unveiled a planned goal celebration for the cameras—she pulled a tiny banner from her sock that read, “Happy B-Day Kreigy, we liebe you.” Krieger was out of the tournament after tearing her ACL, and the Colombia match fell on her birthday. Liebe was German for love, a word Krieger had tattooed on her arm.

  Next up was the match with North Korea, where the national team showed off another choreographed goal celebration in a 1–0 win. After Abby Wambach’s first goal, the team lined up and held hands, raising their arms in succession to create a rolling wave—a break dancing–type move. When it reached the last player in the line, the players turned and pointed to the midfield, where Hope Solo and Christie Pearce were doing the dance move known as “the Worm.”

  “Sometimes Hope doesn’t get involved in our celebrations, and she said before the game that the Worm is the only thing she can do,” Wambach said afterward. “So we just tried to set her up for something.”

  In the quarterfinals, the national team’s confidence rolled on. After their first goal against New Zealand en route to a 2–0 win, they again celebrated with a planned display, this time with the team breaking out into cartwheels.

  The predetermined celebrations
clearly rubbed some opponents the wrong way.

  “I wouldn’t like it if our team did that,” New Zealand coach Tony Readings said afterward. “When teams concede, they’re disappointed, and they want to get on with the game. But it’s obviously something the Americans do. It’s something I guess they work on in training. We try to work on scoring goals.”

  But Sundhage, the coach who was rebuked so harshly by commentators and fans in Canada for her jubilant celebrations during qualifying, even amid double-digit leads, didn’t care. She was just glad the players were having fun.

  “We score goals and you’re happy,” she said. “What the players want to do, whatever they do, it has to be fun. If they come up with ideas, that’s perfectly fine.”

  But Canada, the bitter rival that was still smarting from the loss during qualifiers, was next in the semifinal round of the 2012 Olympics. The fun was about to stop.

  * * *

  Before the semifinal match at Old Trafford even started, John Herd-man, the coach of the Canadian team, tried to get in the heads of the American players.

  “One of the big threats we’ve got to take care of, and what we’ve paid attention to, is the illegal marking in the box on their corners and free kicks,” Herdman told media the day before the game, adding that he wanted to “raise awareness” with the referees. “Some of the blocking tactics, which are highly illegal—we’ll keep an eye on them in the game.”

  It took about 20 seconds from the opening whistle for it to become clear what kind of match this was going to be. As Lauren Cheney went for the ball, Melissa Tancredi—nicknamed “Tank” for a reason—shoved her to the ground and was called for a foul. Another 30 seconds later, Christine Sinclair shoved Alex Morgan from behind, sending her face-first into the grass for another whistled foul.

  But the Canadians hit the Americans where it hurt first—Tancredi dished a slick pass to Sinclair in the box, and Canada’s all-time leading goal-scorer coolly slotted it past Hope Solo. USA 0, Canada 1: 23rd minute.

  The match was growing increasingly chippy, with each side wanting to disrupt the other’s rhythm. A pair of Canadian players sandwiched Abby Wambach on a set piece, using their elbows to knock her down. Arlo White, the play-by-play announcer for NBC, called it a “Wambach sandwich” and remarked: “Isn’t it interesting that John Herdman, unprompted yesterday—he brought it up, didn’t he, this ‘highly illegal’ activity, and it’s his team that is getting very physical on these corner kicks.”

  One minute after that moment, Megan Rapinoe stood at the corner flag for a corner kick. She launched an in-swinging ball toward the goal and no one touched it. It curled straight into the net—a type of goal that is fittingly known as an “Olimpico.” It was the first-ever Olimpico scored in an Olympic Games. USA 1, Canada 1: 54th minute.

  The Canadians responded by becoming even more physical. One minute after Rapinoe’s goal came a shocking display of bad sportsmanship. With Carli Lloyd down in the box, Melissa Tancredi seemingly went out of her way to step on Lloyd’s head with her left cleat. The referee didn’t see it, or else it would’ve surely been a red card.

  Lloyd stayed down for a minute but played on. She later told reporters she was shocked when she saw the replay and noticed Tancredi looked to have done it intentionally.

  Soon after, the duo of Tancredi and Sinclair returned to revive Canada’s lead. From a wide channel, Tancredi cut around a defender and lofted a ball into the box. Sinclair rose up and headed it off the inside of the post and past Solo. USA 1, Canada 2: 67th minute.

  The Americans returned fire just three minutes later, again on a splendid individual effort from Megan Rapinoe. Kelley O’Hara switched the point of attack with a long ball from the left flank over to Rapinoe on the right. From well outside the box, Rapinoe pushed the ball wide, pulled her right foot back and fired a rocket. It bounced off the far post and into the net. USA 2, Canada 2: 70th minute.

  But Christine Sinclair was unstoppable. Barely two minutes had passed until Sinclair scored again. She rose up over all the Americans on a corner kick and headed the ball inside the near post. USA 2, Canada 3: 72nd minute.

  By this point, John Herdman, Canada’s coach, had taken to taunting the Americans who sat on the bench about 20 feet from where he stood. Coaches weren't supposed to leave the technical box they were designated to stand in, but Herdman made sure he could get close enough to the USA bench that the players wouldn’t be able to miss him. Then, he shouted at them.

  “I vividly remember John Herdman coming over to our bench and aggressively celebrating, to put it mildly,” says Heather O’Reilly. “We all thought it was completely absurd.”

  “He would get excited and he’d turn and say something to us,” remembers Shannon Boxx. “I remember being so mad, like, Go away! It was so intense. It pissed me off, but hey, that’s what he wanted, to piss us off, and it worked.”

  Pia Sundhage had to stand next to him. There was about three feet between her technical box and his. She tried to ignore him. She hadn’t read or watched his taunting comments before the game. She didn’t plan to pay attention to what he said afterward. But during the game, there he was, shouting at her, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “I would have expected him to behave a little more respectful,” Sundhage says now. “The fact that he tried to have a bad impact on the game, I’m not proud of that—I want every one of us to be proud of the women’s game . . . We’ve gotten the chance to compete at the highest level and show everybody this is something good for the women’s game. Why on earth would you try to break that down or destroy it?

  “He is the only one of all coaches—and I’ve met a lot of coaches, a lot of coaches. I think they’re all pretty much okay, most of them are very good, some are great. But in that particular game, he didn’t behave in the right way.”

  As the match went on and stretched into the 77th minute, the Americans grew increasingly desperate to get an equalizer. Abby Wambach did what she always did in situations like this where the U.S. was playing from behind: She tried to get the referee to clamp down on time-wasting.

  Time-wasting is arguably the most frustrating and most cynical aspect of soccer. Once a team gets a lead and there’s not a lot of time left, they do everything they can to burn precious time off the clock. The theory is that whatever time is wasted won’t be added back onto the clock as stoppage time after the 90-minute point.

  Many times, it works. A player fakes a leg cramp here, a player is indecisive on a throw-in there—it all adds up. Many games in the history of soccer have been won on such shrewd time-management and gamesmanship.

  But sometimes it backfires. In the World Cup only a year before, Brazilian player Érika had fallen down in the box after not being touched and pretended she had injured her back, forcing trainers to come out and use a stretcher to carry her off the field. Once she was carried to the sideline, she ran straight back onto the field, making her ploy obvious. The ref made sure the wasted time would be added onto the clock. It was in the injury time tacked onto extra time that Abby Wambach scored the stunning goal that captured the hearts of Americans and put the national team through in the 2011 World Cup.

  Here at the Olympics, the Canadians wanted to settle down the pace of the game. They had the lead, and there were only 13 minutes left in regulation. If the Canadians could kill vital seconds from the clock, they would do it. Time-wasting, after all, was part of the sport.

  So, Wambach started loudly counting every time Canadian goalkeeper Erin McLeod held on to the ball. Wambach held her hand up and counted with her fingers to make sure referee Christina Pedersen could see.

  The official “Laws of the Game” that govern soccer say a goalkeeper cannot hold on to the ball with her hands for more than six seconds. Goalkeepers routinely hold it longer, and it’s almost never called by referees—it’s soccer’s version of jaywalking. And yet, it is the rule. McLeod had been warned already at halftime by an assistant referee about taking too long
with the ball.

  “I wasn’t yelling. I was just counting,” Wambach later explained. “I probably did it five to seven times.”

  When McLeod prepared to kick the ball away in the 77th minute, Wambach counted. One . . . Two . . . Three . . . She got to 10 seconds, and then Pedersen blew her whistle.

  The referee awarded the U.S. an indirect free kick from the spot where McLeod was standing inside the penalty box. It was a bizarre decision. It was to the letter of the law, sure, but no one had ever seen such a call. Yet, it meant that the Americans had a lifeline.

  Seven Canadian players stood holding hands in front of the goal to form a wall as Megan Rapinoe stood behind the ball and assessed the situation. Because it was an indirect kick, Tobin Heath poked the ball forward with her toe at the whistle, and then Rapinoe ran onto it and fired. The shot was headed straight for the face of Marie-Eve Nault. She turned her body and put her arm up in front of her head, and the ball bounced off her arm.

  Pedersen blew her whistle again. This time it was for a handball in the box on Nault. The Americans had been awarded a penalty kick under highly controversial circumstances. The crowd at Old Trafford buzzed with a mix of boos and cheers. The Canadians were furious.

  Wambach stepped up to the spot and, when the whistle blew, she didn’t hit the ball hard, but she tucked it neatly inside the post, making it too far for McLeod to reach. USA 3, Canada 3, and the game moved into extra time.

  With another 30 minutes added to the clock to decide a winner and break the 3–3 stalemate, goals were harder to come by. Both sides had chances, but both sides looked fatigued, too. When Heather O’Reilly came onto the field in the 101st minute as a substitute, she offered some fresh legs, but she wasn’t getting many touches on the ball.

  The match ticked past the end of extra time and into stoppage time. It seemed the referee would blow her whistle at any moment and the game would move on to the crapshoot of penalty kicks. But the Americans had one last chance to mount an offensive in the 123rd minute.