Heh. I didnt want to get anywhere near another Ellis Dee anti-soccer screed, but I have been laughing at this.
“We didnt win, change the game so that we can win, mmmkay…”
Is this the biggest choke not involving Bill Buckner? The game was won- twice. And do the players ever like- you know- practice penalty kicks?
The US had very good shots though. Three or four off the post, quite a few just wide.
Have this happen a few more times, preferably against whoever your biggest rival is, and you may start to get to know how it feels to be an England fan 
Those don’t sound like “very good” shots to me. YMMV. Maybe you’re more forgiving.
I watched the game. I thought the finishing on both sides was very poor. Speed and athleticism doesn’t come into it. Matt le Tissier was one of England’s technically best attackers over the past couple of decades, but unfortunately he played at a time when the England team was all about running hard rather than actual skills.
He famously was a lazy arsed guy. Hardly knew how to run. Yet he knew where the goal was and how to get it in there. In this final I saw a lot of running around but very little technical ability up front.
Take the official stats:
http://www.fifa.com/womensworldcup/matches/round=255989/match=300144437/statistics.html
The US had 27 shots but only managed 5 on target. That’s dreadful. In comparison, Japan had 14 shots but managed 6 on target.
Shots skipping 2" past the post with the keeper completely beaten don’t count as on Target, but still are good shots. That happened many times.
Perhaps “good chances” is a better phrase though.
I believe we watched different games. Or you’re more forgiving. Or you are pissed off because your team lost.
I watched it an a neutral. I thought the finishing was very poor. As I said, lots of running around but very little skill.
I never said the finishing was good. If the finishing was good the US would have won by 5.
I think there is a dirty little secret a lot of people are forgetting: I don’t think this was a particularly ‘great’ US squad. Good, perhaps, but by no means great: They barely qualified for the World Cup (needed to win a playoff to get in). Losses to England, Mexico, Sweden. They didn’t win their group, when they were definitely gunning to win the group so they wouldn’t have to play Brazil. (and it was the first time they had failed to win their group).
Brazil, I think, had the most pure talent (but still un-tapped, and I really wish they would stop emulating the men’s game of diving and whining). The next best team might have been Germany: Japan beating Germany may well have been the greatest upset in women’s football history - I mean, isn’t this Winter Olympics/Ice Hockey/Lake Placid stuff? Football-wise, I think it was equivalent to the US beating England 1-0 in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil (apparently, at the time most newspapers in the UK assumed it was a typo - England losing to the US just wasn’t remotely possible). I mean, Germany hadn’t allowed a goal in the World Cup in eight years! That was the warning shot that should have put everyone on notice.
But while beating Germany might have been the most amazing result, the victory vs the US means far, far more, both because of the way they persevered, and because of the infinitely higher stakes. The US played their best match of the tournament simply because in terms of style of play, the US - a team of individually brilliant players - matches up extremely well vs Japan, a physically smaller team that plays a positional game (there’s a reason the US, technically, still hasn’t lost to Japan).
But Japan proved itself as very worthy champions for two reasons: 1) its dismantling of Sweden in the semi-finals, where Nadeshiko football at its very best was on full, beautiful display, and 2) time and again, never ever giving up. Fighting back to tie once might be a fluke. Doing it twice is no fluke.
The lessons for us all: Never give up, and the total can often be greater than the simple sum of the parts.
I think you’re right in the idea that, at the end of it all, the US really weren’t a great team. Their #1 ranking was quite misleading, for all the points you make. But they were great competitors. That US/Brazil game will go down in women’s football as one of the best come-from-behind victories in the sport. (Though I could fill another post in telling you how tired I got of the “never say die” and “never count them out” and “fighters right to the end” after that match!)
Only one disagreement with your post, and it’s actually a correction- Canada was the first team to score on Germany in over 700 minutes of World Cup play. The beautiful free kick scored by Christine Sinclair was the only bright spot of my country’s appearance.
Uh, what now?
My nephew was on the CalSouth ODP team as a U14 player. They played the women’s national team and shut them out. Didn’t manage to score either, score was 0-0. Now this was an elite U14 team, but still, it was 13 and 14 year olds. About 4 years ago (the 92 team).
My nephew had the unenviable goal of defending Abby.