How seriously can I take myself as a hardcore soccer fan if I don't write something about the Women's World Cup final and the U.S. team's famous victory?
While four goals in the first 16 minutes is obviously a deep outlier of an occurrence, it wasn't as accidental or as just-lucky as it might have seemed. Watch the first two goals. Pay particular attention to Carli Lloyd's initial positioning and her movement on the plays:
Did you catch that? Did you see how on both goals Carli Lloyd moved from a substantial distance away to a pocket of empty space that was exactly where the ball ended up? Those weren't accidents, those were plays. The U.S. coaching clearly noticed a particular weakness in Japan's set-piece defending and set up those plays to take advantage, and boy did they. The ball found Carli Lloyd in each instance because it was supposed to.
Now just five minutes in, and Japan were down 2-0 and deeply shellshocked. In serious competition, with so much on the line, it's not easy to regroup emotionally and energetically after something like that, and during the time it takes to return to balance (or as balanced as possible, once you're way behind like that), it's not unusual for things to go from bad to worse.
Bad to worse: Normally, Azusa Iwashimizu would manage to clear Tobin Heath's deep cross, but instead she was late to react and just popped the ball up into the air so that Lauren Holiday could smash home that volley. (And what terrific composure Holiday showed there. It's the easiest thing in the world to blast that shot 19,000 rows into the stands.) Normally, Ayumi Kaihori isn't quite so careless in her positioning, but now Japan were down 3-0 and her brain was doubtless a jumble of electrical static, and--well, you saw what happened next. (You should watch it again. It's awesome.)
And just how on fire was Carli Lloyd? When she missed a free header wide a few minutes after the chip, for what would have been her fourth goal, she looked almost surprised. "You mean I can miss?" the look on her face seemed to say. She was well-deserving of the Golden Ball.
A great win for the USWNT and a lot of fun to watch. Good job, USWNT, you are all the belles of the ball.