"That's why she doesn't start," the guy said when Alex Morgan, a substitute forward and the youngest player on the U.S. team, had a bad touch on the ball. "She's had a lot of bad touches."
I liked this guy. He was wrong about Morgan, completely wrong. And he was rooting hard for the American women, jumping out of his seat at near-goals. But he also was analyzing what was going on out there instead of blindly rooting.
Morgan, who came on at halftime, got the first goal of the game, a beauty. Forwards don't need perfect touches all the time - sometimes one will do. And Morgan came up big again with the perfect pass to Abby Wambach for the second U.S. goal, in overtime.
At least the guy at the bar realized U.S. players had weaknesses. The Americans, who had dominated the first half but failed to score, still got within three minutes of winning the Women's World Cup, deep into OT. However, their biggest weakness, their one real weakness, cost them in the end. I don't claim to know much more than the guy in the bar. But either U.S. coach Pia Sundhage didn't trust the depth of her backline or she had way too much trust in her starting defenders, since she made no substitutions in the back.
Sundhage placed a bet that Rachel Buehler, who had struggled in the lone previous U.S. World Cup loss to Sweden, would do better against Japan. She did most of the way. But in the end, Buehler was negatively involved in both of Japan's scoring plays. And she was simply beaten to the spot on Sawa's goal that put the game into penalty kicks.
If the plan was to count on this one player to stop a dangerous Japanese weapon on the corner kick, then it was a plan that contributed to defeat.
