Hope Solo's Paradox (a book review)

Solo: A Memoir of Hope is the story of a deeply charismatic outsider. She is a lone wolf, but she was also a prom queen. That's the paradox of Solo's persona: she's the outcast in the middle of every drama, the anti-social social phenomenon. Solo might be an independent spirt, but this book is centered on her relationships with other people.

The book's most compelling writing focuses on her childhood and on the drama which unfolded behind the scenes at the 2007 World Cup. Her father - a drifter and a grifter - is at the center of both stories. He looms large over the whole book, for good reason. He was a natural athlete, a charismatic and attractive man who was much loved by the dozens of kids he coached. As Solo herself acknowledges, her father routinely destroyed his personal relationships - he stole money from his family, and he left Solo's mother dispossessed of their home.

People in Solo's family stuck by each other though seriously troubled times - her family is full of complicated people who are fiercely loyal to each other. Solo was very close to her father - and he wasn't an easy person to be close to. He died just before the 2007 World Cup - only months after a friend of Solo's had been killed in a car accident. She buried him, and went to China supported by other players with experience dealing with profound grief. The squad seemed tighter than ever until its coach benched Solo for the match that would become the team's most infamous loss.

Most fans will read the book for its chapter about the 2007 World Cup. Like many watching the tournament, I was shocked to see Solo on the bench. With a different keeper slotted into the defensive system deep into the tournament, everything seemed off. As is now well known, after the match Solo said a few choice words about the selection. She asserted that she'd have made the saves that Briana Scurry didn't.

After reading Solo's account of the aftermath of this loss, I felt far more sympathetic to her teammates than I expected to. Solo was punished for criticizing the team. She was isolated, forbidden from watching the last match, forced to fly home separately and put through the paces in a way that seems really particular to women's organizations. The team bonded in its criticism of Solo and staged "come to Jesus" sessions whose main function was to be to heap more and more shame and anger upon her. The team was stuck in an emotionally abusive script.

It's clear now that the team was struggling with the humiliation of that defeat. Although the book does not provide much insight into what that felt like - there is no blow-by-blow account of that match (at least not with the level of detail you'll find in other player memoirs) - it is clear that the entire USWNT organization lost their minds.

If Solo was grieving her father, the team was grieving the loss of its status. It had been separated from its glorious legacy and it had been separated from that legacy by a team with far, far less institutional support and experience. It was, for a lot of these players, their first experience with this level of failure and public humiliation. Given the team's status as the sport's golden girls, that fall from grace would be a long hard trip.

That so many of the players framed Solo's behavior as a betrayal of the '99 legacy affirms that everyone was feeling their way through what was, in fact, a structural inevitability. Solo's account of this period reveals a community of women holding very tightly onto their heroines. I think it also shows us how scary it is to take your place in those ranks.

History has a way of forgetting women - especially women athletes. A lot of us feel protective of our history. We must all remember that the women who won trophy in 1999 were not the first American women to play the sport. They are the first American women whose names were celebrated. I don't think there is any easy way to take your place in a history that is so recent, so tenuous. When Solo complained this summer that Brandi Chastain was too critical in her match commentary, she surfaced the problem in the relationship of one generation to the other - a structure neither of them created and that neither of them can transcend. Chastain's criticism will sound like a mother's. Solo's complaints about that criticism will sound like a daughter's.

Men can point back generations. They can place themselves in elaborate constellations of teams and players. American women have had just this one team. And they are with us - broadcasting the matches. As they should be. What a burden to carry, though. Ugh.

When the USWNT lost to Brazil, and when they lost in such a dramatic fashion, they showed everyone that they were not that team. And, perhaps, until then, on some level the team didn't know how to think of themselves as better than that team - each generation needs to work this out.

It's difficult to grasp what this loss - so laden with its symbolic weight - must have felt like. A different kind of book (written by a neutral party with a more critical eye and poetic touch) would make this into a different kind of story. Who is to say, for example, that Solo's remarks weren't themselves a violent disidentification with Briana Scurry's abjection in that moment - a way to emotionally protect herself from the knowledge that it might easily have been her hung out to dry. She'd put a huge burden on herself - she was playing for her father. What if she let his memory down? What if all that drama was produced by young women carrying complex fears and anxieties about their place in the world? One, in isolation, playing for the memory of her father. A collective, formed in opposition to her, bonded in defense of the memory of their mothers. Each loyal to another generation at the expense of their own.

That's an awful conflict. And it is not a part of Solo's story. That's me reading into it.

Solo comes off in this book as supremely confident. She actually doesn't seem to have much of a relationship with fear of failure. Or fear.

(This brings us to the limits of this genre. As I wrote elsewhere in a post about Robbie Fowler's autobiography, "there is no story quite so dull...as that of the totally confident person." Usually this makes player memoirs kind of boring. Many of the most famous have never sat with real failure. And those players have done nothing but play football all their lives. And they are young to boot. Not much drama there to work with.)

It would be nice if there was more of Solo's game in this story. I assume that as this book was put together, someone thought that detailing her team's various campaigns would turn off all but the hard core fans of the sport. I'm sure they were right about that. Thankfully, someone thought that the book should include some discussion of the USWNT win over Brazil in the last World Cup. That chapter is emotionally rewarding.

The book is a fantastic read - it's a great portrait of a player in context.


I conclude with a complaint I couldn't fold anywhere else into this review because it seemed so out of place with the book as a whole. Solo doesn't get into too much detail regarding her love life, but she does confess to making out with a woman while she played for Lyon. She writes,

One French girl flirted with me for months, asking,  

"How do you know you don't like kissing girls if you've never tried it?" 

"Trust me," I said. "I know I like men."

One night I got drunk and let her kiss me. I'd had gay teammates throughout my career-I thought maybe I should see their side of things. So we made out. Interesting but not life-changing. I was straight.

The references to her relationships with men are more abstract. She dates men, has relationships with men - she does discuss this fact but not in any great detail. So why have the lesbian kiss in the book at all if not to titillate the reader? This is the book's "no homo" moment - invoking homosexual possibility only to contain it. With nothing else to say about the gay teammates she has had throughout her career (and what can she say about them?), I am left wondering what this passage is doing there at all.

Greatness Has Been Found: A Close Reading

Doing it themselves. USWNT fans at the 2011 World Cup semi-final.

At the end of yesterday's match, most of the USWNT pulled Nike t-shirts over their uniforms. The kit sponsor must move its merchandise. As long as the swoosh is on the team jersey it doesn't much matter than they throw another Nike product on at the designated moment. Except that this shirt is just so awful. Let me count the ways.

Greatness had been found.

The suggestion is that in the win, the US 'found' a greatness that was absent from not only the team, but from the tournament. This is embarrassing. I love swagger, I really do. But this isn't swagger.

Greatness has been found. In small letters, under the emblem, "United We Stand."

The USWNT has been ranked either number 1 or 2 in the women's game for eons. Even if they don't make the road to victory easy on themselves, they are, in fact, not the underdog. They are the team that everyone wants to beat. Their opponents bring full-on heavy metal GAME. Everyone loves to take them down.

To suggest that this team has had anything but a very long history of "greatness," that this "greatness" (what a shitty word) is anything but their freaking baseline is just ridiculous. Not one fan buys that narrative.

The closest this team came to being an underdog of any kind was last summer and frankly it was only those of us who actually follow the team who were even aware of this. In fact, most of the mainstream US sports media ignored the team during its struggles. Most of us fans could not watch any form of broadcast of the play-off matches with Italy which would determine IF they were going to the World Cup at all.

Greatness has been lost? If only the channel was found upon which we could watch it!

You'll never walk alone? You will in the world of American women's football if you are anything less than freaking invincible.

The Americans feel like they have to win every tournament just to stay in the headlines. Last year was scary. Placing second in the World Cup in the same year that the home league was floundering must have been absolutely harrowing for everyone on the team. This hit home for me as players talked about how hard that loss was. That wasn't just about being bested by Japan. That was about what not being the best might mean.

So it's a bullshit slogan because it implies that people have stood by the sport in its darkest hours and now they have been rewarded by the team suddenly happening upon their own greatness. The US women's soccer program is, instead, a fascinating story of a super-dominant team that has to fight for every single scrap of media real estate. They been doing this for, uhm, twenty years.

Greatness has been found.

The best you can say is that the team was flirting with slight underdog status for a few months last year. There was a chance they might not make it to the finals. A chance. That, my dears, is not an underdog team.  Imagine representing Manchester United or Real Madrid or Spain this way. For, really, that's the level of "greatness" we are talking about, isn't it?

Now, this slogan has a context. Nike has been working this "greatness" theme in an Olympic campaign celebrating the greatness in the ordinary athlete. But the unveiling of this shirt at the moment the US defeated the World Cup champs reveals the grotesque ideology at work in the multi-national apparel corporation's advertising. These ads are deeply manipulative - they show little kids inhabiting the space of big-time sports competition. Adult voices narrate their story as that of the underdog. It's a recitation of all the times girls and boys are told, "no, you can't just do it." And they do it anyway.

If you want a glimpse of how much media manipulation goes into such things, just look at the media's love affair with Lolo Jones and its complete disinterest in the three women who actually won the 100m hurdles. I admire Jones - but USA athletes Dawn Harper and Kellie Wells were favored over Jones and took silver and bronze. New Zealand's Sally Pearson took gold and set an Olympic record. The three of them ran a close race. Photo finish. But at the race's end, the media flocked around Jones.

Meanwhile, Mexican American Leo Manzano stormed through the pack to take a silver medal in the 1500. That's a huge story for all sorts of reasons, too. But it hasn't gotten the same coverage that as Jones's tears.

Greatness has been found.

The media liked the idea of a very beautiful woman who disavows her power. I've always read the media fascination with Jones's virginity as a preference for the self-castrating woman. The pretty, non-threatening underdog. Meaning, if you are woman athlete, please pretend that you don't know the full measure of your power. Please, just be great. But not too great. Not too obvious. Tuck that greatness into the closet. Let someone find it for you. Oh, and please be pretty.

Oh, what a story it would make for that woman to win! This is the media's work not Jones's - she is right to complain that the excoriating she's received is unfair, and it actually makes the whole situation worse.

She lost. Sports media (or, I should just say NBC) was left the fact that it picked an underdog who didn't even medal. AWKWARD. Because then the media was left with the looming question as to why it continued to ignore the two American athletes who did. Even a next-day interview turned focus back to Jones as the interviewer (Michelle Beadle) baited Harper and Wells to trash talk. This they did somewhat gleefully.

Neither Wells nor Harper are self-effacing. They are not prone to apologize for being great. But neither is Usain Bolt. Bolt can boast about being a living legend. He is one. That shirt would make no sense on him. And it makes no sense as a USWNT shirt.

Bolt is with Puma, as it happens. Puma likes Bolt. Puma also understands how to use real-life grammar.

Greatness has been found.

This is not the language of swagger. It is the language of a militarized bureaucracy.

Where was this greatness? Under the couch? In the back of the closet? Did someone leave it on the bus? Someone actually wrote a slogan in passive voice - and then vaporized whatever trace of the subject might have been implied from both the noun and the verb.

How was this greatness found? Did it just roll out from under a seat and then it was noticed, generally - by no one in particular?

Greatness has been found.

American mythology flips its obsession with winners into the delusion that everyone can be a winner.  A winner and an underdog. Everyone always already has won. If this sentence doesn't express the affective miasma of entitlement I don't know what does.

Greatness has been found.

You know, one might want a shirt that said something like "2012 Olympic Champions." OH, wait. Adidas is the official apparel company for the Olympics. Nike can't make a reference to the event on the shirt. (How about "The USWNT went to London in 2012 and won this t-shirt"?)

Finally: The shirt is boring. There is nothing visually interesting about it at all. Not one design element resonates with the game. It could be about anything. Or nothing.

Far, far better are is the "greatness" found by a bunch of teenage girls armed with a pair of scissors and some face paint. They express a guileless enthusiasm for the game that just can't be bottled, and you know it's the only kind of shirt that does real justice to the players.

All In, All Out: a note on the amazing Megan Rapinoe

In two interviews, four years apart, two different USWNT players casually identified themselves as gay to reporters. Neither did so with the solemn declaration, "I'm a lesbian." Both players answered a reporter's question in a way that snuffed out the presumption of heterosexuality maintained by mass sports media on those rare occasions when it addresses women athletes, a presumption it maintains in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

In 2008, Natasha Kai (remember her?) responded to an NBC interviewer's question about her rocky start on the national team squad:

"It was a hard time," remembered Kai, who saw limited action under former coach Greg Ryan as one of the last three players added to the 2007 World Cup roster. "I had missed the first camp [under Sundhage] in early-January because I had bronchitis, and I was going through a nasty break-up with my girlfriend. Then [Coach Sundhage] told me my job was on the line."

The fact that she's gay was not only subordinate to a story about her fitness; it was subordinate to the story of relationship trouble. The "problem" was not that she had a girlfriend, it was that she and her girlfriend broke up. It was gay drama, but it wasn't drama because it was gay. It isn't at all clear from that interview that Kai was coming out to anyone but the reporter, or to the reader who assumed she was straight. Her answer is structured by the assumption that this is just her life, and anyone who knows her would know this.  Which is a coming out - and it's the kind of coming out that has to be staged over and over again within a discursive context that prefers not to notice that there are a lot of gay people in the sports world. Scarcely any of the media discourse asking "when will it be OK for a soccer player to come out" qualifies the question by pointing out that in fact prominent women athletes have come out, and are a part of our sport. And that this hasn't magically banished homophobia from it.*

Megan Rapinoe's coming out was even less direct than Kai's. In May, Jimmy Conrad (former US national team player) interviewed Rapinoe for KickTV. At the end of their conversation (at about 5:20), he observed that she's been supportive of the gay and lesbian community. By even pointing this out, Conrad identified himself with that community as at least an ally. When does Bob Costas take notice of something like that?

 

KickTV isn't like mainstream sports media. The Youtube channel is closer to a fan forum. Conrad is very relaxed and familiar with his interview subjects, and his interviews are conducted with a sense of humor. The whole affect of the video is closer to what soccer culture actually feels like (alternately technical, serious, self-deprecating, goofy, bashful). It is much more familiar to me than is anything I've seen from NBC this summer.

Conrad's question seemed pulled from conversations about the men's game. Things are pretty stark in that world. It is indeed hard to imagine a current EPL player coming out to the media. The question seemed like it was pointing in the direction of the men's game, but this wasn't at all clear.

In the women's game, things aren't so black and white. There are, in fact, quite a few high profile figures in women's soccer who have spoken publicly as lesbian athletes, usually without making the fact that they are doing so into a headline. Pia Sundhage, Nadine Angerer, Hope Powell - in most of these cases, the fact that these women have placed themselves within the lesbian and gay community isn't news, except to LGBT media. (Outsports.com keeps a constant eye out for players who take this step, as does After Ellen.) Mainstream sports media avoids acknowledging the sexuality of out lesbian players, even as it apparently can't stop itself from addressing the romantic lives of straight players. (Thank god for Hope Solo, who forces heterosexist media to wrangle with a loud-mouthed shameless man-eater. HA.)

In any case, when it comes to naming a player as not only lesbian, but "out," in the women's game we are often discerning between shades of gray. In an interview for a program called Abbey Road, for example, Marta was asked about the impact of her international travel on her relationship with her girlfriend (also a soccer player). She said that of her two loves, soccer comes first. Is that a coming out? Can a player be out in Sweden but not in the US? Seems so. So why, in the US, does the air get sucked out of the room when the word lesbian is put in the same sentence as "Marta"? Perhaps while she was under contract with the WPS, the desire was that everyone practice a "don't ask, don't tell" policy? What was the fear,exactly? That lesbians might suddenly start attending soccer matches?

In Strong Women, Deep Closets (1998), Pat Griffin offers a table of escalating categories of "outness" to describe how people manage their identity in sports.

1. Completely Closeted             Concealing lesbian identity from all in athletic context
2. Passing as heterosexual         Intentionally leading selected others in athletic context to see self as heterosexual
3. Covering lesbian identity      Concealing lesbian identity from selected others in athletic context
4. Implicitly out                        Allowing selected others in ahtletic conext to see self as lesbian without naming self
5. Explicitly out                        Intentionally revealing lesbian identity to selected others in athletic context
6. Publicly out                           Revelaing lesbian identity to everyone in athletic context.

It's a helpful scale for at least presenting something other than the "closeted" or "out" binary that usually shapes this conversation. A lot of public figures in sports seem to fall somewhere between 4/implicit and 6/public, but of course these would be the athletes that we are mostly likely to notice. 

Even within the top of that range there seems to be room for nuance and gradations, given the complexity of the media sphere. Today, it isn't like you are coming out to one of three networks. Instead, you talk about your girlfriend within a very specific media context that cares and respects you for the player you are. It's not the same interview you'd give to ESPN - it is unlikely that ESPN would solicit that kind of interview from you. They aren't going to ask you what it's like to have a girlfriend who also plays your sport at the international level. Or if coming out shifted your play at all. Or if there are lesbian athletes who inspired you. (espnW might, someday.) The remarks you do make on these subjects within the micro-media of (e.g.) women's sports blogs may or may not be picked up by larger media networks. Given the paucity of attention given to the women's game in general it isn't likely to be as big a story as, say, a ponytail pull. 

Anyway, Pia Sundhage has said that for her being a lesbian "is no problem," and that she and her partner were welcomed when they came to the US. (See Patricia Nell Warren's recent article on Sundhage.)

But it is a problem for plenty of people. As readers of this blog will know, there's a broad and deep culture of homophobia in and around women's sports. And if players are pressured to be very, very discrete about their homosexuality, you can assume that this pushes a lot of women out of the sport entirely. Gender policing and homophobia push a lot of people out of sports. No news there.

Athletes decide to be discrete about their sexuality for lots of reasons - and I'm not in any place to speak to their experiences. Coming out to the media is a political act and what that means to the person who does it is something only they can tell us. But the ramifications of coming out seem to be more complicated than we want to believe - for women have come out, and that doesn't seem to change how women are represented. If anything it just seems to make the commercial organizations that manage sports anxious.

Conrad's question to Rapinoe:

You've vocally supported the lesbian and gay community. What do you think about the absence of out athletes in sports? Do you think we'll see a high profile soccer player come out soon?

This question replicates a lot of assumptions - assumptions built on years of not remembering or noticing the women athletes who are out. I mean, her coach is out. And she's one of the most famous people in the sport. How can you ask a woman on the USWNT soccer team that question without erasing the lesbians who are a part of it?

There was no way for Rapinoe to address that question with a "Yes/No/Maybe" without replicating its assumptions. And there was no way to respond honestly without "outing" herself. Without promoting herself from perhaps level 5 to level 6. So Rapinoe answered:

Hopefully. I think that obviously we're out there. It's weird. I guess on the female side, not on the men's side. But it's accepted within the teams and within the sport. But it seems sports is that last...institutional homophobia.

Welcome to level 6. I love how in getting stuck with explaining a pretty complicated subject she just sends a cross to "institutional homophobia." For that's the right move: if you haven't noticed that quite a few of the most famous women in the sport are out to the media, then that's a symptom of a big problem.

Rapinoe refused to allow herself to be interpellated as closeted, and she also refused to allow the question to situate her as somehow in the dark about the fact that there are, in fact, quite a few out lesbians in the sports world. Obviously. That is as important as the word "we." Obviously we are out there.

All of this is to say that there are out women in sports. Pia Sundhage, Hope Powell, Nadine Angerer - that's just a few. None of them are shrinking violets, none of them are in hiding. But there are days when it seems like the media is hiding from them.

As we all know, Megan Rapinoe has gone on to have a fantastic tournament. Obviously, there's no hiding from that.

*For bloggers trying to find their way through this thicket, GLAAD offers a media guide for addressing sports and homophobia. You can download it here.

Solo thoughtz

If you aren't following Hope Solo's twitter feed, do.

Today's tweets were in response to Brandi Chastain's remarks during the US game against Colombia. At about 18 minutes, Chastain disparaged defender Rachel Buehler's ball control. She said that Buehler gives the ball away too much, and "needs to work on an improve on" her trapping skills. The problem is not exactly what she said. What defender doesn't need to work on, improve on her game? The problem is the way Chastain said it - these remarks were part of a constant stream of negative commentary about the US's game. There was, in fact, so much criticism of the USWNT that there was hardly any real discussion of their opponent. A commentator is supposed to offer criticism of the match - Chastain is not being paid to be a cheerleader for the team (this is where Solo is wrong). But criticism should be even handed. What did we learn today about Colombia? Not nearly enough.

I've been hesitant to criticize Chastain - like a lot of people, I admire what she's done for the game in this country. (She was delightful in an interview I did with her a couple years ago.) I also like having a defender's perspective in the mix. Personally, I always want more attention to the game's dark arts.

For me, the real problem with Chastain's commentary is that it is humorless. That's why the criticism she doles out for 90 minutes can feel so grating. She sounds irritated with the game. She sounds annoyed. It just is not fun to listen to.

Supporting the sport doesn't mean going easy on teams - quite the opposite. Informed, detailed, animated analysis of the game makes everyone watching it smarter. Passionate narration of the action gets everyone more involved in the broadcast. In an interview about his earliest memories of soccer, Zidane recalled not the action, but the commentator's voice - he remembered being pulled to the television by his voice. The sound of a person totally interested in and excited by a game.

The shocking thing here is not that Solo had something to say about how Chastain calls matches. It's that she let loose about an NBC commentator and former US national team player on Twitter, right after a game. Someone wound her up. This leaves us with some interesting questions:

• How did she find out about that segment of the broadcast? (These tweets were sent right after the match finished.)
• Who let her have a phone? (She's infamous for what she's capable of saying right after a match finishes.)
• What was it about that remark about Buehler that got Solo mad, with so many other similar moments to choose from? 

Anyway, I love that we have players who are not totally controlled by the team's handlers.  Or maybe they are. Maybe this is all about stirring the pot, keeping the women in the news, and using the ancient trope of the cat fight to do so.

A Punch in the Face

Colombia played a good game: they have hustle and you can see flashes of real skill in their ball handling. But they were clearly frustrated by the USWNT, which seemed sometimes relaxed and in the groove and sometimes distracted. But they were dominant nevertheless. Those flashes of insouciance would have driven me mad - nothing worse than playing a team that's thinking about the next match while it's dispatching with you.  Colombia had a moment of thinking there was a chance, just a chance - they kept the game scoreless for the first thirty minutes. But then Rapinoe scored.

A few minutes later Rapinoe was flying up the wing with the ball. Lady Andrade struggled to get ahead of Wambach, who was racing up the middle. Incredibly, Andrade reached around Wambach with a hook to the face. Deliberate foul.

Except the referee didn't see it. Wambach was just about in line with Rapinoe - so I'm really stunned that none of the other officials caught it. No whistle for the foul. Wambach took another hard foul almost immediately after - this one less deliberate, though. And then a scrap over a dead a ball. Thankfully, things calmed down in the second half. The USWNT, already up 1-0, put the game away with two more, and qualified for the quarterfinals. Good news but Wambach may have a nice shiner to show for it.

2012 Olympics: USWNT says cou cou!

Cou cou is French for "hey girl."

If Les Bleues feel robbed today it's in the way you do after leaving the doors to the house unlocked and the windows wide open. They took the early lead with two quick, confident and gorgeous goals from Gaëtane Thiney and Marie-Laure Delie.

But the Americans kept their cool. Or, rather, they woke up.  Rapinoe replied with a well-placed corner picked up by who else and what else but Abby Wambach and her head. French players shrugged with a "what are you gonna do?"

Alex Morgan's first goal was a delicious example of how smart she is as a player.  Revolving her body around a loose ball as it dropped at her feet, she tapped it into the goal with two defenders on her. At least that's how I remember it.

There was more. Lloyd rocketed a P'noe assist. P'noe was just a great play maker today, setting off a counter attack with Heath and Wambach that had Morgan racing up the right as the ball was moved forward across the field - she took her place at the far post with plenty of time to spare and nicked the ball in as it came across the goal. The US played a fantastic team game today.

France fought the whole way - it wasn't an easy win but it was an assured one. Les Bleues will be back: they looked very strong, very smart. I think that early lead surprised them?

Some of the other games remind us of the teams that aren't here. Also of programs that had a great history but have fallen off the international radar, like China. Cameroon seemed so young, so inexperienced - it just isn't right that a side like Nigeria has become such a shambles they didn't earn a spot here, or that Equatorial Guinea is at home (for a player eligibility violation during the World Cup) while North Korea are here. North Korea just shouldn't be here. The team was disqualified from the 2015 World Cup but allowed to play in the Olympics - adding insult to injury, word is FIFA forgot to run drugs tests on North Korea during qualifying matches.

You have to feel for the North Korean players, though: that can't be easy. Especially when the match organizers slap the South Korean flag next to your face in the team introductions. The team stayed off the field for nearly an hour as that diplomatic nightmare was sorted out.  

USWNT & France dive into the deep end of the Olympic pool

When the US women square up against France tomorrow (noon EST), they will be facing one of the tournament's toughest opponents. Les Bleues lost the 2011 World Cup semifinal to the Americans and players didn't hold back in expressing their anger at the result. Louisa Necib put it plainly enough to L'Equipe: "The worst is that we were better than them."

As luck would have it, I was in the team's hotel lobby when the more beautiful team (as they dubbed themselves) rolled in after that match. They didn't look defeated at all. They seemed, in fact, defiant.

As it happens, US women were staying in the same hotel and the post-match party was in a hall just off the lobby. They piled out of the bus exhilarated, jubilant, radiating with joy. Abby Wambach had a halo around her head.

Necib, Elodie Thomis and the ascot-wearing FFF entourage glowered at the doors behind which the USWNT celebrated their win. It was clear they felt robbed.

The US won on the strength of their counterattack. They did steal the win. The USWNT have a different kind of skill than that for which the French team is known. It's the classic match up - physical strength and strategy against skill on the ball.

My overall take: France is capable of winning the whole thing. Winning a tournament is the only thing they haven't done, and that's probably their biggest obstacle.

Germany is out thanks to the shitty IOC/FIFA qualification process. Nigeria, which wears down every team it plays until someone finally sends them home (thus doing important work for everyone left) has been set back years by mismanagement. England and Brazil will make it out of their groups. But Brazil has not looked right recently. They could implode. It's not impossible. Something is rotten in São Paulo and if they don't take home a medal the players should freaking strike.

Japan are of course world champions and their group looks not so bad - South Africa is weak and inexperienced. Canada's performance in the World Cup was underwhelming. Japan v Sweden (7/28) is obviously a match to watch - their World Cup face-off was a nail-biter.

France and the US are in a group with the ever mysterious North Koreans - who by all rights should not be at the Olympics, having been banned from the 2015 World Cup for doping and not having been subjected to testing in their qualifying matches. Thanks FIFA!

Columbia are also in this group: they have scrap. But if France and the US don't make it out of this group, it'll be a freaking scandal. Either because one was beaten by a serious underdog (with some exciting young players) or because one was beaten by a squad that's been banned for doping. But events shouldn't play out that way: teams like North Korean, violated and abused by their management, are not usually able to pull out the big win.

tomorrow we will see a little of this (look how relaxed she is - and those eyebrows!)

versus a little of that (see her American hustle!)

I. Can't. Wait.

Picturing Hope Solo

Hope Solo survived her fifth week on Dancing with the Stars. I'm glad: she is a smart, outspoken athlete and the challenge of that program requires that she confront the different ways by which her image, as a woman, is regulated. I, for one, am glad she's willing to do so publicly.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, some USWNT fans hate the way DWTS treats Solo: Judges complained for weeks about how unfeminine her movements are, and every week they cite her physical strength as a weakness. I've explained why I don't think that is necessarily wrong. (It's a gendered performance, Solo seems uncomfortable in heels and also unsure of how one executes a routine without powering through it.)

It is worth pausing, however, to remember why fans of women's sports can get very defensive: we've been abused. We've been abused by the media blackout on women's sports, which is interrupted only occasionally by stories of exceptional victories (in lieu of regularly coverage of a season, for example) or by portraits of female monsters. So we flinch when we see the media turn its eye towards us. It's a conditioned reflex.

Add to that the paternalistic attitude with which administrators and even (sometimes especially) supporters of women's sports treat women athletes. Leagues have banned players for getting pregnant out of wedlock (imagine doing that to men! in this case, the athlete filed a suit so she could play,  she won but the controversy ended her promising career); fans tsk tsk when they see players off the court who pile on make up or wear a short skirt. National Federations compel athletes to grow long hair, and prefer that those women keep their opinions to themselves. (Look feminine! But not too much! Play hard! But not like a boy! Or too much like a girl!)

Most of us don't know where to start when talking about the image of the female athlete, because every step seems to take us in a bad direction. So when in 2009 ESPN Magazinefirst produced "The Body Issue," featuring portraits of naked men and women athletes, fans of women's sports started sharpening their knives.

It turns out that a lot of the portraits directly challenge conventions regarding the feminization and sexualization of the female athlete - this is particularly true for the image of Solo used as one of the magazine's covers.

Practical matters make photographing nude women tougher than photographing men: Women are obliged to pose in ways that covers their chests. This means that the poses are more static and defensive. Solo's cover photo is an exception. The pose reveals much about her body while also refusing, aggressively, to capitulate to conventions regarding the female nude. She is in motion, moving forward toward the viewer - her curves (and she does have them) are not hidden so much as engaged, put to work.

I think this must by why a Washington Post writer recently described Solo as androgynous. Hope Solo is as far from being androgynous as one can be: When you look at Solo, you do not wonder if she's a boy. Not even close. If she were androgynous, she couldn't have played the broad shouldered, big haired 80s Bon Jovi bitch so perfectly on this week's episode. (She landed in 4th, her best finish to date.)

But the photographs of Solo treat her body in a way that is very close to gender-neutral. It's not Solo that's androgynous, but the composition of the portraits - it's the way she is being looked at. It the way she is not being looked at.

"The Body Issue" gives us a lot to think about. Those portraits are cool, but when you look at the rest of the issue you'll see a TOTAL absence of coverage of women's sports. The only place women figure in this issue is in the nude portraits. So, the project of "The Body Issue" seems to be completely independent of any effort on the magazine's part to move towards parity in terms of its coverage. The truly sad fact is that the editors of the magazine probably think putting that wonderful portrait of Solo on the cover "counts" as coverage of women's sports. Not in my book. And, I suspect, not in Solo's either.

Flat footed Solo!

I would love to know how often DWTS women are allowed to wear flats.

Solo was much lighter on her feet. In fact, she seemed to enjoy the performance - she was playful. The team is moving up the ranks even as the competition gets tougher.

Note that rehearsal footage shows Solo in heels. Someone made a decision. I feel heard.

Hope Solo, on her toes

Could they please just let her dance in flats? That's what I thought as I watched Hope Solo fight her way through a jive in high-heeled converse sneakers. Letting Solo dance in flats would make this whole Dancing With the Stars thing less anxiety provoking. Who isn't worried about her turning her ankle? Those joints are of national importance! 

I have been so preoccupied by her feet I've scarcely noticed this season's gender drama.

A few bloggers have already critiqued the big deal the program makes about Solo's strength and her struggle to get what reads as feminine grace into her movement. One judge couldn't help himself, and declared that Solo has "thighs that could crack a walnut." He basically called her a ball-breaker. Before we make a federal case of this, let's remember: This is Dancing with the Stars.

Everybody on that show is in drag. All contestants whose personae are at odds with ballroom comportment appear to be at sixes and sevens with their own bodies. This is especially true for certain kinds of athletes - those for whom appearing to float, for example, might go against everything they know about their bodies. Exit Metta (formerly known as Ron Artest).

Although this season features entertainment royalty transman Chaz Bono and the Queerest Eye for the Straight Guy Carson Kressley (whom we all hoped would be allowed to dance with a man), the most explicit gender panic has fallen on Hope Solo's magnificent shoulders.

Solo, stepping over her partner.

Much is made of Solo's musculature and power. There are lots of jokes about who is stronger, Solo or her sleek bear of a partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy. He quite visibly thrills at being so near to a woman who can top him.  This was the explicit content of their last dance number, in which he basically plays her water-boy. The number opens with her shoving Maksim to the ground and then stepping over him with those high-heeled shoes.

Hope Solo must surely be up there with Anna Kournikova, now, as the woman guys would most like to lose to. Steve Nash, for example, is on board for the ride. 

EA knows that we like watching women beat men. They seem to know, in fact, that men like watching men be dominated by women. In very contained forums.

Dancing with the Stars is an interesting case, for although men and women compete directly against each other, that competition is mediated by their partners - and also by the fact that they are all competing as intensely unnatural, stylized versions of really specific embodiments of femininity and masculinity. It makes interesting television.

What makes Solo's presence interesting television is the fact that her physical power and ability allows for the pleasures of the spectacle of female domination to be played out with her dance partner in particular ways. Is this the week when Solo plays it like a Bond girl? Is this the week she elbows Maksim Chmerkovsky in the face? Or is this the week she does both?

Solo can move, she makes nice lines out of herself, and she is tireless. She partners well with Maksim: they both have a physical style, and it will be interesting to see how they explore their collaboration. Watching them dance, it is hard to see who leads. She seems to push him back - and I suspect their choreography will work best when they go with that tension. Even if they are awkward, they are a genuinely sexy couple precisely because they seem to be constantly negotiating who is leading whom.

Theatrical play with the idea of female domination is a staple of Dancing with the Stars choreography. Over and over again, a dance arcs from combat to submission, as one seduces the other. As the producers of the show make a big deal out of Solo's athleticism and physicality, they help create the script for her performance - a context for reading this pair's dynamic.

The judges help us to understand, too, that a successful performance of one's gendered role here is an intensely regulated physical performance.

People who play this particular game straight don't do well. This is especially true for the male dancers, who are always at risk of becoming little more than props. Chaz (son to Cher, the world's most famous Drag Queen) and Carson (pioneer gender coach) both know this, and thus have the sense of the showmanship required for the male dancer to be even visible when paired with a woman dressed like a trashy Tinkerbell.

An athlete like Solo will have such a different relation to her body than most of the women who appear on the program. Her movement is rooted in years of practice - it has a physical economy. How she knows where her center of gravity is, how she turns a foot, or claims the space around her - this is all developed through a body keyed to a purpose - that purpose being the opposite of feminine comportment. She is agile - a goalkeeper is usually the most athletic, most agile player on a team. But she is solid: she is not a bowl of cream, a cloud, a feather - to cite the language used by the judges to describe those dancers who successfully perform ballroom grace. But she will also understand her movement, her bearing as technical - the rehearsal footage is interesting, for the ways that she and Maksim talk to each other. (M: "What are you looking at, when you have your head down like that?" H:"The ball at my opponent's feet.")

I can roll with the gender drama played out around Solo. But I also can't help but wonder if what we are seeing is a general working-though of the nervousness people feel when confronted by a woman whose unnerving confidence is not anchored by her spectacular beauty.

I don't see Solo as compromising herself by playing with what she can do in this media format. I would rather the show play her strength and athleticism up than play it down.

Her appearance on Dancing with the Stars seems to be of a piece with a multi-platform attack on the public consciousness, in which USWNT players appear in contexts that embrace their athleticism - that, in fact, treat them as athletes without, however, losing sight of the interest-value that attends to almost all female athletes. By which I don't mean their femininity - but rather the way that the image of the female athletes surfaces gender itself as a thing.

Sports Center has been producing amusing ads around the USWNT. These bits play with soccer and gender drama. Take this video, in which a pre-haircut Abby Wambach responds to a hallway "dive."

Part of its humor is her cold indifference to his shouts of pain. He's the wuss here, and it's a woman who is calling him out on it. (Abby Wambach's importance to the team also means that the team can't be represented only by its more girlish players - much as the media would love to edit boyish players from the picture, they can't - and the public doesn't want them to.)

In another "This is Sports Center" spot, Solo and Alex Morgan play keepie-uppie with the Miami Dolphins mascot. Their vibe is ruined by anchor Stuart Scott, who plays the part of that guy:

The problem here is the man who thinks he can keep up with the women and the dolphin. Which is to say that gender isn't the main problem: it's the sense of authority that a sports anchor has in relation to the game - a sense of authority that he loses the minute he tries to enter into it. One can't help but wonder if he feels entitled to enter into this conversation because he underestimates the skill required by it. Gender might have something to do with that - not because the players are women, but because the sportscaster's sense of entitlement is rooted in little more than his masculinity. The joke, in other words, is on patriarchy. And there is a real pleasure to watching Scott participate in making that joke.

Gender enters into the story of Dancing with the Stars because the competition is only a few degrees shy of RuPaul's Drag Race: It is completely fair for the producers and the judges to underscore the ways in which various performers struggle to channel the light footed nobility of Fred Astaire and easy grace of Ginger Rogers, and to use a language of masculinity and femininity in offering their critiques.

It would be nice, however, if dancers had the option of playing their part in a cute pair of ballet slippers.

Another Reason to Love Pia Sundhage

I wish I could take credit for finding this video of Pia Sundhage playing the guitar and singing a Swedish Joan Armatrading-ish track. My archive isn't that deep, however. So we owe a big thank you to Jen O'Neil of She Kicks (via twitter @SheKicksdotnet) and also @DandalBs, who explained that this is a "happy revolutionary song from the 1970s" and shared the following translation (of the title? lyrics?): "we are the legends for those who come after us." Indeed.

2011 Women's World Cup: Reflecting on the USWNT run

I write this from the train, on the return journey that marks the conclusion of my experience with the 2011 Women’s World Cup. There are sleeping Japanese fans scattered throughout the cars – I imagine they went directly from celebrations to the station. 

The USWNT players are flying home. We’ll be in our own beds tonight, back to normal.

It’s been an emotional ride.

It is hard to argue with the fact that the women’s game is more generous than the men’s. Remember last year’s final in South Africa? It was an awful, cynical display. Spain won not a football match but a bar fight. The world gathered in unison to watch that? All I felt at the end of that game was a faint disgust with myself for having spent so much time covering the tournament.

The USWNT and Japan, in contrast, gave us a game. I come away from that match – from the whole tournament – wanting more.

Sure, there is room for criticism of both team’s performances. But the domain of that criticism is pure football: Strategy, technique. Who doesn’t love to talk about these things?

Fans in the stands were furious with Japan’s tendency to delay the game – they were slow with their goal kicks in particular, and were often content to pass the ball around the back. Quite a few of us found it alarming for what it implied: they were waiting for us to tire ourselves out.

Yes, the USWNT needs a more clinical finish, especially under the kind of pressure applied by the Japanese National Team last night. Wambach in particular seemed to play much of the game in the middle of an accordion, opening and closing around her. She got space in the midfield, but the more she closed in on the goal, the tighter the Japanese grip. 

It was thrilling to see how Wambach responded to this. She cut and ran, she charged and bullied, she took players on, and she shot. It was an erie reproduction of Necib’s performance against the US, though frankly Wambach played with much more gusto, aggression and creativity and didn’t flag though I can only imagine she had wrung every bit of energy out of herself by the game’s end.

But as was the case with Necib and Bompastor (who is probably Wambach's closest international analog in terms of bad-ass prowess), the more energy the US strikers poured into the game, the more this energy sent shots too high, too far. 

Sometimes, the harder you try the harder it gets. 

But to focus on this would be to miss the two wonderful goals the USWNT did score. Morgan and Wambach, both, by doing exactly what they do best – powering in front of the back line and beating the goalie one-on-one (Morgan), and by throwing herself to meet the ball in the air (Wambach) with a clinical finish no one can dispute, never mind touch.  

Rapinoe was as exciting to watch as Wambach: She reads the game brilliantly. Again and again, “Pinoe” (pronounced like the wine) pulled the ball away from Japan and turned the run of play around. She is quite literally a game-changer.

The first of Japan’s goals was a gift from the US defense. An exceptional moment, as through most of the game, the back line really worked. Buehler, in particular, was tough as nails.  

I don’t want to think about that first goal from Japan – it was a lowlight for the USWNT, and Miyama showed great control by capitalizing on it. (The US had these chances, too, but did not profit from them.)

Those goals are the opposite of set-pieces. They are struck by players who have no right to imagine that ball would be in front of them. They take composure, and the ability to think very quickly and act as if by reflex. Japan watches for these kinds of openings, these cracks in the wall and slips right through them. 

Japan’s second goal from Sawa was class. It was the kind of goal that makes one sigh with the elegance and strength of it. She wings into the danger zone as if called down by the gods to sort things out. This is what sent us into penalties.

The rest is history. Again, it was not the USWNT’s finest moment. We had all come to expect better.

And here is where I felt the arc of the tournament narrative most. 

This was the World Cup championship match, and it was a great game. We had everything but refereeing scandals (we even saw a red card issued in the closing minutes of play). We had great goals and opportunistic goals. Terrific saves from both goalkeepers, and shots that by all rights should have gone in (Wambach, in particular, was robbed of a goal by an unlucky bounce off the crossbar.) 

The US played a ferocious game against Brazil, and unlike some fans, I really liked the game they played against France. They played the best team in the tournament and lost to them – but they weren’t walloped, they weren’t dominated. Far from it. For long stretches, the players played the best game they’ve played all year. It really looked like they could win it all.

But throughout the year, we watched the USWNT squeak through. Losing to an increasingly strong Mexican side, they forced themselves into a playoff with Italy (not exactly a women’s football powerhouse). Then they scared us in the first leg of that exchange with an underwhelming match rescued by an impossibly late goal from Alex Morgan who scored in injury time. They won at home in a solid game, played before a small crowd. They lost a friendly to England.

They struggled, and at times it seemed like few cared. Sometimes I wondered if the USSF was relieved – as if the strength of the USWNT were not as a source of pride, but an embarrassment.

The match that would decide if the no. 1 ranked team in the world would go to Germany was not even broadcast on television. ESPN webcast the game, but only to its subscribers. Fans were worried about the team, and about the USWNT program more broadly. 

The women’s national team program has seemed moribund – plagued by the same problems that hold the men back: US athletes grow up playing a very regimented game, one that can stifle creativity. They only play against people their own age, and so don’t develop the improvisational guile that one hones in situations when outmatched. And so on. 

We spent a lot of time lowering our expectations.

Why does Alex Morgan always come on so late? Why doesn’t Pia mix up her starting 11? Why is LePeilbet playing out of position? The physical game isn’t enough! Defense isn’t enough when that defense isn’t perfect! Just about the only person we never complained about was Hope Solo. Even Wambach took flack.  

Alexi Lalas loves the USWNT (photo from his twitter feed)

Add to this the USSF’s horrific publicity campaign for the team – forever holding on to 1999, anxious about the “attractiveness” of the team (the WWC player video portraits used at the start of matches show all the players with their hair down, ‘blown out’ into gentle waves), unsure of how to redress the team’s visibility problem (e.g. 2007’s Nike slogan for the USWNT: ‘the best team you’ve never heard of’), totally ignorant regarding the team’s fan base. The USSF commissioned a kit designed to be “feminine but not cutesy” (their words) - and produced nothing whatsoever that a male fan might wear to identify himself as a fan of the women’s team. 

The USSF and Nike put far more energy into the men’s team’s Gold Cup campaign than into the women’s World Cup appearances. Far more.

These administrative problems sting. They are insulting to fans, to the athletes and to the communities who have damned well heard of the team. We find in the USSF’s desire to feminize the team’s image the kind of thinking which, taken to an extreme, leads to environments from which gender non-conformity itself is banned, as is the case with the Nigerian squad. 

For what is that “feminine but not cutesy” design mandate if not some sort of apology for Wambach’s power and her broad shouldered, confident swagger? You can imagine the boardroom conversations. The sighs of relief that express not gratitude for Solo and Morgan’s talent, but rather for their physiques and long flowing locks. (Which is insulting to them.)

US fans are over it. We really and truly are.

And if the USSF thinks that the team’s image needs feminization more than it needs, say, grassroots outreach – well, it makes me anxious for the sport’s future. 

Last night, I was reminded of how effectively a great match can blow that bullshit out of the water.  The love for the game (in all its elegance and cruelty) was on full display. 

And I was part of a crowd celebrating that: 48,000 people all focused on the actions of twenty-two women. No distractions. Just game, and the pulse of all the people who love it. 

Scarcely anyone left the stadium before the players – we couldn't stand to be parted from either team. It was mesmerizing.

2011 Women's World Cup: Quick Thoughts on USWNT and Japan

Japan turned the narrative tables: This time it was not the USWNT winning against the run of play. They attacked relentlessly for much of the match, and came awfully close to scoring over and over again.  Japan forced the USWNT to bring the game to them. Every now and again, they let up their breaks. They exploited a defensive mistake, and scored a fantastic goal from a corner. And got more of their penalty shots than did the US.

It was a hard fought game. Abby Wambach was tireless. That must have been one of her best performances in this tournament. It was inspiring to watch. She is just a flat out heroic athlete. The full range of her skill was on display, which is incredible given how intensely she was being marked.

Rapinoe was also a star - she had some million dollar moves in this game, and many of them were defensive. She scooped passes off the ground, swept in to intercept passes, and plucked balls out of the air with her toes. Buehler was fantastic - her determination on the back line stopped more attacks than I could count. I could run down the roster, so many players turned themselves inside out tonight.

Sawa. What can you say about her? She is a very smart and skillful player. She has a sixth sense about where to be on the field and is so fast, it often seems as if she can teleport herself from one end of the pitch to the other.

The penalties were hard to watch. The last ten minutes of play were so chaotic, so frantic. It was plain to see that the US players were rattled, and their performance in front of the goal showed it. Japan were more steady, just.

My heart breaks for the USWNT players. That is a hard way to lose a match. Because they came so damned close. But it was a noble loss to a deserving team.

The stadium atmosphere was outstanding. Except for the sixty-plus VIP seats that sat empty from start to finish.

Today I was told (anecdotally) by a Fifa official that 80% of Fifa staff had never seen a women's match. I believe it, because if those assholes can't be bothered to attend a World Cup final, what women's match will they go to, exactly?

Let me conclude these thoughts on a positive note: Sepp Blatter was booed mercilessly during the closing ceremony.

Seriously, though, the US players threw their whole being into this match - I've never been more proud to be a USWNT fan. And if we had to lose to anyone, at least it was to the best team in the tournament!

Against the Run of Play: on USA's win over France

From some perspectives (including that of players on the field), it looks like France outplayed the USWNT in the World Cup semifinal. But France lost. [Necib, in today's edition of L'Equipe: "The worst is that we were better than them." 14 June]

It has been said, too, of France’s game against England, that they dominated possession, played the better game. But they only won on penalties. Many felt that Brazil played a better game against the US in the Olympics, some might say they played a better game (in a few ways at least) than the USWNT last week – but Brazil lost the Olympic and the World Cup matches.

Defensive work from the whole team provided the architecture of the USWNT’s recent wins - from Solo, Sauerbrunn, LePeilbet, Rampone, Rapinoe, Lloyd, Kreiger, and more. Even pressure from Alex Morgan contributes to this side of the USWNT game: I never understood why the striker was brought on so late in match after march until I saw her entry into the game with my own eyes.

The minute she took to the field, she began harassing the keeper and France’s back line – when they had the ball.

For long stretches against a ‘technical’ opponent like Brazil or France, it looks like the USWNT isn’t playing pretty football. Those teams love to hold the ball. They play a possession game.

The media trains us to look at the game through the logic of attack. When we do so, we act as if a team only plays when they have the ball. But of course this is just not true.  

Be wary of sports talk about possession and the “run of play.” Possession is not nine-tenths of the law in the game.

Think of Italy. The team’s style polarizes the football world for its ungenerous play, but the record speaks for itself. That kind of team is expert in weathering attack. It’s siege-mentality football, in which one lets the opponent do a certain kind of work – in which one lets them spend and spend and spend energy and imagination. Eventually, they pass a tipping point. One pass too many, one moment of hesitation, and you can see frustration settle in. Attack that much over an hour without success and the last thirty minutes become desperate. 

Flashes of counterattack exploit the cracks that have developed under the dynamic stress of the possession game. [That is when Morgon comes in.]

The USWNT isn’t playing as cynically as Italy at its most notorious. But some of the same principals are clearly in play, and have worked.

I still don’t understand Japan’s game. They look more “total” – end-to-end, there is something jaw-droppingly complete about the way the team plays. Personally, I am thrilled they beat Sweden and are in the final. They are the most exciting team in the tournament, and lord knows, there is a global sense of good will for the team.

Whatever happens, Sunday’s match is going to be fantastic.

A View from the Stands: On USA v France

After the pathos of the win over Brazil, today’s match was a relief.

My sense of relief pales, however, compared with that of the people watching the semifinal with me. 

I write this from the “family bus” – as luck would have it, I attended the France-USA match with the family of Lori Lindsey. The USSF has a “family program” – a package tour that allows a player’s friends and family to spend game day together and sit en masse - many in full USA regalia. 

I can see the attraction of it. Fans have one relationship to the game, players another. A player’s circle has yet another way of relating to things.

The morning ride from Frankfurt to Monchengladbach was subdued. Lunch was quiet, mellow. Families of substitutes (like Lindsey) hoped their player would get time, they worried about the day’s result – but hardly dared speak about it. We tended to talk about other things - anything, really, but what was staring us in the face.

As much as they want their player to play, everyone wants the team to win, more. 

Spending game day with moms, dads, partners and friends of the team was grounding.

Pundits and fans talk a lot about what they think is going to happen. What we present as givens are usually enormous assumptions. Until a few days ago, a lot of us talked as if the teams were competing for a chance to lose to Germany.

The only people who probably didn’t think like this were those around the team itself. Partners and brothers, dads and aunts. Moms. They thought more about what they hoped would happen, and avoided thoughts that made any of presumption of victory. Superstition.

Back to the match itself

Although this was destined to be one of the most lively matches of the tournament (in strictly footballing terms), attendance topped out at 25,000. (The stadium holds 40,000.) Our side of the stadium was pretty full. Opposite us were rows of empty VIP seats. This was probably most of what the televisual audience saw of the crowd.

US fans were present in numbers, however. You have to credit American soccer fans – they (we!) were visible, and loud. The best were a large mysterious tribe of girls in handmade t-shirts, painted faces – painted bodies in fact. They wore not one scrap of FIFA or Nike produced regalia. Everything was improvised with the sloppy enthusiasm of a real fan. They ruled their section of the stadium – and fed a steady drip of hysteria into the somewhat anemic stadium.

French soccer fans really missed something – and frankly, their team needed them.  I’d say I was surprised by how few of them were there, but having spent the past three weeks in France I know there is very little awareness, very little outreach on behalf of Les Bleues. Photo-spreads in Sunday magazines do not put warm bodies in the seats. The FFF has to work a lot harder.

Les Bleues needed just a little bit more wind in their sails. Their skill on the ball is incredible; their passing is elegant; they exploit their opponent’s errors ruthlessly. For most of the match, we were just plain anxious.  But Les Bleues also appeared to be seized by waves of nervousness. Every now and again they’d hesitate with a shot, make one pass too many – a chance would come and go. But as soon as that fear was beaten back, they seemed invincible.

But they weren't. The last thirty minutes of the match were so incredible. I am not sure the USWNT has played a better game this tournament. You all will have to tell me what it looked like on TV. 

All I know, is the view from the stands, where I sat surrounded by the people who love the team the most.