The United States women’s national soccer team did not perform as advertised in Tokyo.
The Americans struggled out of the gate, dropping their Olympic opener to Sweden in rather stunning fashion. The U.S. still managed to reach the semifinal stage, but its pursuit of a gold medal came to an end Monday with a 1-0 loss to Canada. It marked the Americans’ first loss to their North American neighbor in 20 years.
So, what went wrong for the U.S. at the Games? Longtime team leader Megan Rapinoe put it in rather blunt terms after the loss to Canada.
“If I could just say something, I just think the players have a lot to look at ourselves about,” Rapinoe told reporters, per ESPN. ” It’s not like, ‘Oh, we didn’t play better,’ and getting on each other, but we need to perform better, period. We don’t have juice because the ball’s banging off our shins and we’re not finding open passes and doing the simple things.”
“We can deep-dive into analyzing, and I know we will, but at the end of the day, there’s all the preparation you can do and all the tactics, and then there’s everything else, and that’s what we were missing. You can’t put a name on the ‘everything else,’ but it’s just getting it done from players, from all of us.”
Rapinoe and Co. might not leave Tokyo empty-handed. They’ll battle Australia on Thursday in the bronze-medal match.
