BEIJING — Team Chaos has finally changed its colors. One more win and the faded red, white and blue of the United States women’s soccer team will be bright gold. Considering how far it has come in a year – hey, maybe in two weeks – the rest of the world is again green with envy.
The U.S. women get a major rematch with Brazil for the gold medal at 7 a.m. Thursday MDT. A win would reassert the U.S. atop the women’s soccer world, a throne they’d fallen from and early in this tournament didn’t seem destined to return to any time soon.
“Brazil is one of our biggest rivals,” midfielder Shannon Boxx said Tuesday. “There’s always motivation to beat your rival, no matter if you won your last one, there would be motivation to win this game.”
But the U.S. didn’t. They got drubbed 4-0 in Hungzhou, China, during last year’s World Cup semifinals, triggering a chain of events that put U.S. Women’s Soccer near its lowest ebb. Coach Greg Ryan, who shockingly subbed goalkeeper Briana Scurry for Hope Solo, despite consecutive shutouts, got fired.
Solo, who was sent home after popping off for being benched, was reluctantly accepted back. Suddenly, the darlings of American women sports a decade ago entered these Olympics with a lot to prove. At first, what they proved was not a lot had changed. They lost their opener to Norway, 2-0.
“What’s great is with this team, nothing needs to be said,” defender Lori Chalupny said. “We know where we’re headed and we know what we want. We could tell by just the look in each other’s eyes that we still had a chance.”
It’s easy to have confidence when the offense comes alive. New coach Pia Sundhage replaced Ryan’s plodding defensive style with a more aggressive attack and despite the loss of star Abby Wambach to injury last month, in the last four games the U.S. has scored 11 goals. They’ve come from seven different women.
Brazil, meanwhile, has done nothing to disprove it’s the best in the world. It has gone 4-0-1 while out-scoring its opponents 11-3. Forget the Americans’ three 1-0 exhibition wins over Brazil in the last few months. Marta, Christiane and Daniela, its three best players, didn’t play and Christiane has replaced Marta as its scoring phenom, tallying five goals.
“It’s been great that we played them a couple of times in warm-ups,” Boxx said. “It’s always good to play great teams. It will be different. There were some great players that weren’t there, but we’ve seen those players in the past so we’re definitely prepared for that.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
