Women's World Cup Capsules: Despite WCup loss, plenty of optimism for US women

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Once the Americans get over the disappointment of coming up just short at the Women’s World Cup, they’ll find plenty of reasons for optimism.

The U.S. team pulled together amid a series of challenges that, just a few years ago, would have broken it apart. And while the illustrious careers of captain Christie Rampone, Shannon Boxx and maybe Abby Wambach are near-ing their end, Lauren Cheney, Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe proved in Germany they are more than able suc-cessors.

There’s also another major title to be won at next summer’s London Olympics, and qualifying starts in just a few months.

“It’s just unfortunate, just a bummer,” Carli Lloyd said after the Americans were stunned by Japan in a riveting final Sunday night, losing 3-1 in penalty kicks after twice blowing leads in a 2-2 tie. “But there’s another World Cup in four years.”

For some. The majority of the team will remain intact through London, but Rampone (36) and Boxx (34) are likely to call it quits after that. Wambach said it’s too early to say what she’ll do, but she is 31, and her body is showing the wear and tear from the fearless playing style that has earned her third place on the all-time World Cup scoring list with 13 goals.

Wambach passed Michelle Akers (12) for top U.S. honors with her header in the 104th minute Sunday, her fourth goal of the tournament.

“I’m not thinking about that right now,” Wambach said when asked about her future. “I just want to spend some time with my teammates. This has been an emotional roller coaster ... and the Olympics are right around the corner. We’ll move on.”

Part of what has always made the U.S. so strong is the smooth transition from one generation to another, and the U.S. might have its most promise since the days of Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain.

Solo, winner of the Golden Glove as the tournament’s top goalkeeper, is in the prime of her career at 29. Morgan and Cheney, both just 22, each finished the tournament with two goals. Cheney also had three assists while Morgan had one. Rapinoe displayed the accuracy and touch on the flanks so critical in coach Pia Sundhage’s desire for a possession-based offense, and has the energy and spunk to shoulder the burden of being the face of the team behind Wambach.

No team found a way to contain speedy Heather O’Reilly, who makes a nice complement to Rapinoe on the oppo-site side of the field. Lloyd seemed to gain confidence in directing the offense as the tournament wore on, having one of her best games against Japan.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues.

The Americans achieved cult status with their grit and resilience in Germany, coming back to beat Brazil in the quarterfinals in a thrilling match, and then grinding down France. But as entertaining as they may be, the Ameri-cans have been making things harder on themselves than they need to be for almost a year now.

They were upset by Mexico in regional qualifying, forced to beat Italy in a playoff to get the very last spot in Germany. They dropped their first game of the season, to Sweden, then lost to England for the first time in 22 years — so long ago Morgan hadn’t even been born yet. After winning their first two games in Germany handily, they lost to Sweden, the first U.S. loss ever in World Cup group play.

“In the past, we’d always won everything,” Rampone said. “Those losses made our team what it is today. We need each other and you feel that, from the locker room to the time we step on the field.”

But the Americans need more than a can-do attitude to keep pace in a game that is improving and evolving.

Sundhage wants the U.S. to play a possession-oriented style similar to the one Japan and France worked to near perfection in Germany, saying the traditional American gameplan of grinding opponents down on defense and sending long balls up to the forwards is too predictable. The offense should develop through the midfield, not start up front. By working from flank to center and back out with series of multiple passes, the Americans can probe the defense for weaknesses and create more opportunities — including chances for players who wouldn’t normally score.

The style also helps on defense. Opponents can’t score when the Americans are keeping the ball for large chunks of the game.

“I think of it as a nice hybrid of the way the U.S. national team used to play and the way that the game is evolving into much like the men’s game, a possession, Barcelona-esque style,” Wambach said. “It hasn’t been without trou-bles. It’s sometimes gotten the best of us because we have some players, like myself, who are old school and like to get the ball in a more physical, direct style. And when things aren’t going well, I like to go back to what I know.”

When it works, though, it is a sight to behold. The Americans looked like a cat toying with a mouse for much of the first half of the final, reeling defenders in only to make the ball disappear with a deft flick or smooth pass to a teammate. Japan’s confusion and frustration gave the Americans wide-open spaces in front of the goal, and they easily could have been up 4-0 at halftime.

But they weren’t, done in by an inability to finish that’s plagued them all year long. If the Americans had con-verted only a handful of the chances they squandered in the tournament, that Brazil thriller wouldn’t have been nearly as dramatic and they, not the Japanese, would have been celebrating late into the night Sunday.

“I don’t blame anybody,” Wambach said. “We had so many chances.”

And they will again, starting in London.

US World Cup team receives a warm welcome home

NEW YORK (AP) — One by one, tired and disappointed members of the U.S Women’s World Cup team trudged off the bus and were greeted with cheers and waves from appreciative fans who didn’t seem to mind a bit that they came up short of a championship.

About 24 hours after the Americans squandered a pair of late one-goal leads and were beaten in penalty kicks by Japan in the tournament’s final game Sunday, they arrived from Germany to Newark, N.J., and heard the first rounds of applause Monday.

From there they took a police-escorted bus ride into Manhattan and encountered a few hundred fans who waited on the sidewalk in sweltering heat to welcome them back to friendly turf.

“Really humbling, and truthfully it’s probably brought my spirits up more than anything else could have,” Abby Wambach said. “I am so disappointed for my teammates, myself. I am so disappointed for our country because I really feel like we had it. It was so close.

“Coming home to this kind of reception is truly one of the best things that has ever happened.”

It started before they even gathered their luggage at the airport. Fans met them there, and often stuffy security personnel posed for pictures instead of worrying about patdowns.

Many passers-by who encountered a crowd of reporters and television cameras in front of the team’s New York hotel stuck around once they heard the squad that captured the nation’s attention the past few weeks would soon be arriving.

“We’re hoping it’s not just bandwagon fans,” goalkeeper Hope Solo said. “We’re hoping that we gain some longevity, and I think we did. I am not surprised by it because I know that we women can play, we can fight. There is such a strong mental spirit among the team, and it’s a special team. I am not surprised that people are jumping on the bandwagon.

"I am hoping I get out of my funk in a little bit because we have Olympic qualifications. I am taking it pretty hard right now. You’ve just got to take it one step at a time. That is what we do as athletes. You bounce back up and go at it again.”

While many players will rejoin their Women’s Professional Soccer teams, collectively this group is already looking ahead to the 2012 Olympics in London. While they still need to qualify for that tournament, they are expected to and will be looking to repeat their 2008 gold medal.

“This one will sting,” Heather O’Reilly said. “I don’t think we will ever forget this loss, but hopefully we have another chance. With the Olympics right around the corner, we’re going to be back into our training regimen right away.”

Nothing will take away all the hurt from Sunday’s loss except a World Cup victory in four years.

“It’s all how the media wants to spin it,” Solo said. “Everyone talked about 2007 for me, World Cup experience and wanting redemption in 2011. But everyone failed to remember that we won the Olympic goal in ‘08. So when it comes to World Cups and Olympics, nobody seems to compare them.

“I want a World Cup trophy four years from now and I want an Olympic gold medal, but it’s completely different.”

Most of the players managed to smile some upon their arrival, even while talking about the bitter defeat.

Before they get back on the field, there will still be public appearances on tap as the excitement of the World Cup winds down. Solo, Wambach and Megan Rapinoe will make appearances on ABC News “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, and Solo and Wambach will be on “Late Show With David Letterman” at night.

“At some point we are going to all need some rest,” Carli Lloyd said. “It’s been pretty much three, four years of just going straight.”

This was the last World Cup for 36-year-old team captain Christie Rampone, but she took it all in stride while toting her two young girls — Rylie, who is nearly 6 years old, and 16-month-old Reece, who was pacing up and down the sidewalk when she wasn’t being held by her mom or Wambach.

Both girls proudly wore Stars and Stripes dresses.

“At the end of the day, we did better than the last World Cup,” Lloyd said. “We made it to the finals after not having been there since ‘99. We have to keep things in perspective. We created a buzz back here. We lifted women’s soccer around the country and even around the world.

“It was fun. It was just a sad ending, but at the end of the day we are second and that is a pretty big accomplishment.”

They will likely realize that and appreciate it more as time goes on. For now, the wounds are still fresh, but sticking together as a team has helped somewhat in the first day following the loss.

“It’s obviously been a big disappointment,” Heather O’Reilly. “A lot of tears, a lot of laughter, telling stories of the last month together — one that we will never forget. This group is special. We will bounce back. We have shown our resilience this whole tournament. I think Americans know that we will bounce back.”

-- IRA PODELL

Soccer boom? Not. Big step forward? Maybe

Let’s begin by not overstating the case.

Predictions of a soccer boom in America have done more to hamstring the development of the world’s game here than all those well-organized, well-meaning parents who became youth coaches with no more than a vague idea of how it’s played. And just so we’re clear, there will be no explosion this time, either.

After the U.S. women stunned Brazil and just about everybody else in a quarterfinal match at the Women’s World Cup, I wrote that if Americans didn’t fall in love with soccer after that, well, maybe they never would.

They did.

For exactly a week.

But that’s how plenty of love affairs go: torrid one day, indifferent the next.

Plenty of Americans already love soccer. Anybody who doubts that should check out the exhibitions being played here this month featuring several of Europe’s top clubs — among them, Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Most of their games will draw crowds that make last week’s MLB All-Star exhibition look like the softball game at a company picnic.

The overnight TV rating for the finale was 8.6, more than tripling Sunday’s marquee event for the boys — the British Open — yet finishing as the second most-watched women’s soccer game ever, trailing the 1999 World Cup final against China. If you didn’t get enough of the U.S. women last week, don’t worry. They’ll be on the late-night and early morning TV circuit this week. Traffic on social media was more eye-popping still, generating at its peak more tweets-per-second than either Britain’s royal wedding or the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death.

But there’s no need to waste time wondering whether soccer will ever be as popular on these shores as the big three of football, baseball and basketball. It won’t, for the next decade at least, for reasons we’ll get to below.

Since long-term relationships are built on learning, the better question is what Americans learned that they didn’t know after all the previous predictions of booms that never materialized: two previous U.S. women’s cup wins (1991 and 1999), playing host to the men’s cup in 1994, the creation of domestic leagues for both sexes..

If we’re being optimistic, the answer is this: We finally saw a U.S. team playing a style that we could call our own.

If asked, every coach and ballplayer will concede a team learns more from a loss than a win. So it was again Sun-day, when a determined Japanese team used the same grit and hustle that’s been the hallmark of every U.S. soccer team, men or women, on a superior squad of Americans. That’s how the U.S. women beat Brazil and then in the semifinal, France, teams that featured more talented individuals and a better understanding of the game.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the final.

U.S. coach Pia Sundhage, a Swede who played for her national team, knew only too well how fast the gap was clos-ing between the American women and the rest of the world in terms of resources, organization and even quality athletes. She had already laid the groundwork for her squad to rely less on athleticism and more on technique; to play the way the best of the rest of the world does by moving the ball quickly and accurately under pressure.

That Sundhage moved the strategy from the training ground to the pitch for the biggest match of their careers shows how much faith she had in this bunch. Even more than American football, soccer is a game of possession and finishing a few scoring chances.. The U.S. women succeeded at the first task, but came away with nothing too many times from the opening minute of the match through the final penalty kick. Even so, they came away with some-thing.

Up until now, the closest thing to a coherent playing style any American squad displayed on a world stage is what the English used to call “hit and hope.” It involves defending countless attacks as if your life depended on it, then booting the ball up the field and hoping a teammate latches onto it — and somehow beats a crowd of defenders to score.

But this one time, even in a loss, the U.S. women stuck their foot in the door and let their countrymen glimpse a wider world of possibilities. Given their legacy and continuing success, it’s only fitting that they’d be the first to break through soccer’s glass ceiling in America. The guess here is that you’ll see the benefits as soon as next sum-mer, at the London Olympics, and not just because the U.S. women will be out for vengeance. They never lacked for motivation and they’ve already learned the game’s most important lesson.

Now it’s the men’s turn. It’s been a black mark on their record that a nation of 300 million has yet to produce even one striker good enough to sit on the bench of world powers like Spain, Brazil, Argentina, England or the Nether-lands, let alone play in the first team. Anyone who thinks they’re getting their fair share of elite athletes should consider what the NBA’s dozen best point guards could do with a soccer ball if they grew up playing the game.

So it’s long past time to hope we hit that jackpot. It’s time to start developing players who can tame the ball with their feet, move it and get it back with enough time and space to carve the same wide swath through the World Cup as their female counterparts.

There will be plenty of time before then to start talking about a soccer boom.

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org.

Joy finally blos-soms in Japan after World Cup win

TOKYO (AP) — This Japanese flower bloomed just when the country needed it most.

A nation reeling from months of tragedy united in joyous celebration Monday after its women’s soccer team — nicknamed “Nadeshiko” for a pink mountain flower — won the World Cup by beating the United States.

Fans decked out in the team’s dark blue colors hugged and sang in Tokyo as they watched the players lift the World Cup on live TV broadcasts from Germany.

On Tuesday morning, thousands of joyous, flag-waving fans turned out to greet the team as they arrived home, and two fire trucks shot out celebratory arches of water over the team’s aircraft as it approached the terminal at Tokyo’s Narita Airport.

Goalkeeper Ayumi Kaihori was the first to come through the terminal. The rest of the team, wearing their gold medals, followed as cameras flashed and fans shouted “Omedeto Gozaimasu”— congratulations.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan called the victory the “greatest gift” to the nation, especially to the residents of the northeast coast most devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The twin disasters left nearly 23,000 people dead or missing and caused partial meltdowns at a nuclear power plant that added to the tragedy.

The “Nadeshiko” mountain flower is believed to be a symbol of femininity in traditional Japanese culture. But some fans said the players defied the traditional feminine role with their tough playing style.

The team, which had to come back twice from one-goal deficits, demonstrated courage by playing “a diehard match even when they were on the back foot,” Kan said in the statement carried by Kyodo news agency.

Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said the victory will encourage those working to help Japan bounce back.

“I’m delighted. The team showed great perseverance and sent a good message toward recovery from the major disaster,” Kyodo quoted Kitazawa as telling reporters in Aomori.

Japan’s players used the disasters as motivation throughout the tournament, watching pictures of the devastation from their homeland before some matches.

The team displayed a banner reading “To our Friends Around the World — Thank You for Your Support” before the final.

Added Toru Komatsu, 22: “This is a chance to forget the nuclear disaster and everything else, to just to unite and celebrate.”

Several members of the national squad played for the former professional team sponsored by Tokyo Electric Power Co., owner of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant.

Japan became the first Asian nation to win the Women’s World Cup, beating the U.S. 3-1 in a penalty shootout af-ter a 2-2 draw.

Bars and restaurants that showed the game live in central Tokyo were packed for the kickoff at 3:45 a.m. local time Monday — a national holiday. At some venues, dozens of fans stood in the street and watched through the windows of crowded establishments.

After the victory, chanting fans spilled into Tokyo’s streets. In Shibuya, a neighborhood known for its youth pop culture, dozens of police kept a small group of boisterous fans from wandering out into traffic.

Special edition newspapers proclaiming the victory were printed by the national papers and handed out to pedes-trians Monday morning, while scenes from the game were replayed constantly on television.

“It has been so scary with the earthquake and everything,” said 22-year-old Miaki Tomiyama. “The team has given us happiness.”

-- JAY ALABASTER