My Greatest Save by Briana Scurry

Author:Briana Scurry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

“THIS IS THE ONE”

While we were playing an uninspired semifinal against Brazil, advancing with a highly misleading 2–0 score line, the great Sun Wen and her teammates were taking Norway to the Chinese woodshed. Sun scored the first of her two goals in the third minute and the rout was on. In the most stunning and impressive result of the whole World Cup, China handed the Norwegians as bad a loss as they had ever had, a 5–0 thumping that happened largely because the Chinese punished Norway—masters of set-piece play—with four goals off corner kicks and free kicks. They attacked with dazzling creativity, doing it so emphatically that Hege Riise, Norway’s star midfielder, offered a prediction.

“If China plays the way it did today, with all their speed and with the way they attack,” Riise said, “they will beat the U.S. team . . . The Americans are good, but it’s hard to imagine anyone stopping them.”

The ninety thousand plus fans in the oval steam bath known as the Rose Bowl came with their painted faces and red, white, and blue regalia, but if they were expecting a stress-free coronation for their girls, we in the locker room knew differently—knew that this was a world-class opponent at the top of its game that was going to give us an epic challenge. China had beaten us in two of our previous three meetings and had only gotten better since it pushed us to the limit in the 1996 Olympic gold medal game. The Chinese were, undeniably, the most in-form team at the World Cup, with a single game left to play. I knew they would have more of the ball than we would, because that almost always was the case when we played. We just needed to be smart and seize our opportunities when they came.

The Chinese did, indeed, have a lot of possession in the final, but I noticed early on that they weren’t attacking us the way they did against Norway. Maybe their coaches thought it best to be more measured in the final, I don’t know. Every game of soccer is unto itself, like a chess match on a much bigger board. I think the Chinese were concerned about our counterattacking ability and didn’t want to get caught with too many players forward. I know we were concerned about how dangerous the Chinese could be, which made us conscious of staying compact and organized and not giving them any cracks to exploit with their rapid-fire ball movement. The result was that most of the game was played between the eighteen-yard lines, the bulk of the shots not terribly menacing and coming mostly from distance.

In the twelfth minute, shortly after Mia made a strong tackle at midfield to gain possession, Michelle let a shot rip from forty yards out. If anyone else had done that, I would’ve considered it a wasted possession, but not with Ms. Thunderfoot. I’d seen her score from there more than a few times. Her shot came in high and hard and right on target.

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