Olympic Womens Soccer: How the U.S. Beat Australia for Bronze – The New York Times

A minute later, Sam Kerr almost gets another. But her header, on an eerily similar cross to an similarly unmarked head, hits the post and bounces back across the goal and out.

Lloyd never stopped running, though, and with Kennedy screaming and gesturing for her goalkeeper to come out, it was too late. Lloyd collected and slotted home her second of the game.

Australia had its moments: Sam Kerr’s goal, the result of a brutal defensive error by Tierna Davidson, was followed by a smart header a minute later that might have turned the tide. But it was saved, and Rapinoe struck back, then Lloyd, and here we are.

Forty-five minutes to go for both teams. But the way the half ended, you half-expect the Americans to come out early, eager to get on with it.

A pure striker’s finish, from a pure striker. It’s 3-1 just before the break.

A rocket of a finish, and a 2-1 lead for the United States. And if you thought Rapinoe was feeling some joy before, you should see her now.

Foord delivered and Kerr finished with her first touch, driving a shot around the scrambling and sliding Davidson and in off Franch’s right hand.

Tie game.

And a moment later she’s rising for a header that nearly unties it — but Franch gets a hand out to push it away.

Quite a few moments. But we’re tied.

Megan Rapinoe: “We still have a medal to compete for. It’s obviously not the type of medal we wanted, but we need to understand, still, how lucky we are to compete for that. We certainly don’t want to lose two in a row.”

Carli Lloyd: “If we’re not going to walk away with a gold medal, I’d like to walk away with a bronze medal at the very least. That’s all the focus is for me and the team.”

Coach Vlatko Andonovski, too, said motivation — even amid disappointment — was not going to be an issue. Asked if firing up his team would be difficult, he brushed off the mere idea that it was needed.

“It’s not difficult at all because we are of the mind-set that we have something to win; we have a medal ahead of us,” he said. “I know it’s not gold, but it’s a medal. It’s not like it’s ours.”

That debate has focused most specifically on Lloyd and Rapinoe, two former world players of the year, two players with World Cup championships and Olympic gold medals on their résumés, but also two players now closer to 40 than 30 trying to hold back younger teammates in the dying of the light.

“Are you trying to push me out to pasture, too?” Rapinoe, 36, joked Monday, after she was asked, several times, if she thought these Olympics would be her last.

Lloyd, 39, has been far more reflective about the topic, but also about the other things she has in mind for her post-soccer life. Book offers. Children. Travel that does not involve stadiums or grueling training sessions.

“I’m not going to lie: I miss having a normal life,” Lloyd said this week. “I miss home, miss my husband, family, friends. But this is what you sacrifice every four, every five years — it’s all part of it. Eventually it comes to an end at some point. So I just try to savor every moment.”

She did that after Monday night’s loss to Canada, lingering on the field crouched in thought as the Canadians celebrated only yards away. She then put herself through a typical session of postgame sprints, all alone on the same field in Kashima where — maybe — she will play her final meaningful game with the team that has consumed her life for two decades.

The Olympics, whether the Americans go home with a bronze medal or empty-handed, are seen as a transitional moment for the United States women’s program. The next World Cup is two years away, in Australia and New Zealand in 2023, and the Paris Olympics follow a year later. A new core may emerge. New talents will join, and respected veterans may be cast aside in the name of progress. This is how teams evolve, even one as good as the United States.

For players, though, who have spent a generation in the U.S. team — Lloyd played her first game for the U.S. senior team in 2005, and Rapinoe made her debut a year later — that is the commitment they must weigh: to stay in the fight, not for a few more months of top-level soccer, or a year, but probably three of them.

“Of course, I’ll obviously think about it after the tournament,” Rapinoe said, declining to offer more. “We don’t get the luxury of going one year at a time. We kind of have to think in these four-year blocks. I haven’t really thought about that.”

She did offer a window into her thinking, though, in talking — maybe not wistfully, but certainly admiringly — about her generation’s achievements, and what will come after she and others are gone from the team. In addition to Lloyd and Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn, who is 36, could face the same decision soon.

“Obviously there’s a few of us that are closer to the end than the beginning, certainly, and we’ve had an amazing run,” Rapinoe said after the Canada loss. “We’ve had a lot of nights that looked different than that.

“We’ve been through so much together. So it’s kind of sad, but I feel like it’s in good hands. This group below us, and even younger than that, are just a fantastic group of footballers.

“I feel like we’ve done our job, but you never want to have it end.”

Tierna Davidson partners with Becky Sauerbrunn between Crystal Dunn and Kelley O’Hara on defense, the latest signal yet that Davidson will be a fixture in this team moving forward.

One lineup change for the United States was made days ago: Goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher is out, replaced by Adrianna Franch.

Naeher, whose heroics on penalty kicks — both during regulation and again in the shootout — carried the United States over the Netherlands in the quarterfinals, was injured in the first half of the Americans’ semifinal loss to Canada. U.S. Soccer said Naeher sustained a hyperextended right knee and a bone contusion when she landed awkwardly in the 22nd minute of that game.

She tried to play on but was forced out of the game about 10 minutes later. A magnetic resonance imaging exam revealed no ligament damage, U.S. Soccer said, but her Olympics are over. The injury most likely will keep her out of action for several weeks.

“Every time you know a lot about an opponent, it helps you,” Gustavsson said.

Gustavsson is no stranger to the U.S. players. He helped the United States win the Olympic gold in 2012 as a member of the staff of the former coach Pia Sundhage, and he later served a long tenure as an assistant under his friend Jill Ellis after she took the head job. Together, they led the team to two World Cup titles.

But when Ellis left the post in 2019, Gustavsson departed, too. After a stint coaching in his native Sweden, he was hired by Australia last September. He felt unlucky to settle for a draw in the teams’ meeting last week, and he still has the inside knowledge — not to mention the scoring of Sam Kerr — to try to do better on Thursday.

“Obviously, this time it was unique that I have been with the team for a number of years, and not just knowing the collective strategy of the team but also the individual tendencies of the players, which kind of helps in the scouting reports,” he said.

That allowed him to spot a tactical shift “from the first minute” the last time the teams met, and to know that the United States might be vulnerable defensively on corner kicks and off long throw-ins.

“It felt like we were in control in a lot of moments of the game, both with and without the ball,” Gustavsson said. “That I like.”

That setup was not popular with his players, of course. Alex Morgan was among those who name-checked “a tactical decision by Vlatko” in a not-too-subtle criticism of the strategy, and several other players strongly hinted that the decision to lay back and defend went against the team’s attacking ethos in an unforgivable surrender.

Expect a very different approach today. The Olympics has been — let’s say it plainly — a miserable experience for the United States, a tournament that started with a humbling defeat against Sweden and ended, at least in the gold medal sense, with a rare defeat by Canada in the semifinals on Monday. Afterward, Megan Rapinoe spoke of a team that was missing not only its connections on the field but also its “joy.”

Canada and Sweden will play for the gold on Friday. There is nothing the Americans can do to change that, or, frankly, much they can do to complain about it, since they lost to both teams.

At this point, with only one regulation-time win in five games in Japan, the United States will just want desperately to leave the Games with a medal. Bronze is the only option now, and Andonovski might win back some of his players by unleashing them to go after it with everything they have.