USA vs Brazil

onetouchfutbol wrote:Wow! Exciting finish. Clearly I didn't plan my wedding today around sports with this going on as well as the Portland vs. Sounders game.

Purplegeezer wrote:

onetouchfutbol wrote:Wow! Exciting finish. Clearly I didn't plan my wedding today around sports with this going on as well as the Portland vs. Sounders game.

Congrats.


But what were you thinking?

My best friend got married on Superbowl Sunday

In DC when the Redskins were playing.....

I had to go, I had the rings.

purple haze wrote: Never say die ... and Megan is still my idol.

Brasil USA
16(6) Shots (on Goal) 14(5)
19 Fouls 17
6 Corner Kicks 11
2 Offsides 4
49% Time of Possession 51%
4 Yellow Cards 4
0 Red Cards 1
4 Saves 3

Alexandra Beier/FIFA/Getty Images
New American Heroes

Chris Ryan on the new heroes of U.S. women's soccer.



Epics need heroes. Yesterday's epic match between Brazil and the United States produced, at the very least two of them. Here's how Megan Rapinoe and Hope Solo became household names in a little more than two hours.

Dwight Clark can have "The Catch." Megan Rapinoe now has "The Pass."

You could call Rapinoe's pass to Wambach a Hail Mary, but that takes away from how precisely calibrated her 30-some-odd-yard cross really was. The gorgeous, arcing ball seemed to hold up in the air just enough to goad Brazil's keeper, Andreia, into coming out for it. But Andreia got it wrong, punching at nothing as the ball hit Wambach's forehead and ricocheted in.

After scoring, after screaming so loud everyone back home in the States could hear her, and after being mobbed by her teammates, Wambach, towering over the other American women hugging her, looked toward something coming toward her. And there it was: Megan Rapinoe jumping into her arms.

"I don't think I've ever hit a cross with my left foot that well," Rapinoe said after the game. It was reminiscent of the kind of psychic, centimeter-perfect passes that made Juan Roman Riquelme into a national folk hero in his home country of Argentina.

There's the fairy-tale version of this story that focuses on Megan Rapinoe missing two years of national team action and nearly having her promising, fledgling career derailed by multiple ACL injuries. And how her hard work, determination, and never-say-die attitude was rewarded with her Cup-saving, 35-yard rainbow cross to Abby Wambach in the 122nd minute.

And now here's the better version of the story: Megan Rapinoe is an absolutely awesome American human being, and if she isn't doing the Top Ten on Letterman by the end of July then we should just put Lady Justice on a milk carton and call her "missing."

Look, anyone who celebrated a goal against Colombia by running over to a field microphone, tapping it to see if it was on and then singing Bruce Springsteen to the television audience at home, is going to Valhalla, as far as I'm concerned.

And anyone who steps up to the spot, as she did against Brazil in the penalty shootout, throws a cocky look to the sideline, crushes a penno, then does a totally earned, drop-the-mic-and-turn on the Brazilian keeper — like this 5-foot-7 woman from Redding, Calif., was suddenly possessed by the spirit of Rakim — and screams something into the air that, even in that most pressurized of situations, made her teammate Alex Morgan crack up … well, that person is my kind of athlete.