The game women’s soccer deserved

Twelve years after a soccer game introduced some number of sports fans in this nation to the notion of excellence in women’s sports, 22 women from the United States and Japan used the World Cup final to put on a display of something far more familiar to fans of all stripes, from the more than 48,000 in the stadium in Frankfurt to those watching from afar.

Excellent sports.

Japan’s double come-from-behind effort and eventual win in penalty kicks was mesmerizing, building from missed American chances early through a foothold gradually gained by Japan and reaching a peak in the suddenness of Alex Morgan’s strike to stake the United States to a 1-0 lead midway through the second half. Yet such drama proved to be only the preface, setting the stage first for Aya Miyama’s equalizer in the 81st minute, Abby Wambach’s seemingly storybook header off Morgan’s cross in the first period of extra time and Homare Sawa’s final fairytale leveler in the 117th minute to send the game to its conclusion.

That it all ended with penalty kicks, simultaneously the most thrilling and least satisfying conclusion currently available in sports, hardly dulled the game’s glow. This was sports at its best — moments like those from the United States vs. Algeria in the most recent men’s World Cup, sustained tension like that from Connecticut vs. Syracuse in the six-overtime 2009 Big East tournament quarterfinal and competition like Rafael Nadal vs. Roger Federer in the 2008 Wimbledon final.

It didn’t matter if you knew of Christie Rampone back when she was still Christie Pearce, if you watched Lauren Cheney endure College Cup disappointment after College Cup disappointment with UCLA or had never seen a women’s soccer game before Wambach’s header against Brazil in Dresden a week earlier.

If you’re a sports fan, you savored Sunday’s game because it was, in a word, brilliant. Devastating, heartbreaking and eternally frustrating if you watched with an American rooting interest, but brilliant nonetheless.

Brilliant because of the rich characters coming to life on the field, from the scoreboard successes of Wambach and Morgan to the athletically tragic figures of Carli Lloyd, the frustrations of shots she couldn’t quite get on target throughout the tournament boiling over in a penalty sailing over the bar, and Hope Solo, the best keeper in the world left to be consoled after the shootout loss. (To say nothing of the other side of the field, where Sawa, goalkeeper Ayumi Kaihori and coach Norio Sasaki and his oddly disarming pre-shootout grin offered compelling stories of their own).

And brilliant in the way in which sports offer an escape from and a magnifying glass on reality, the Japanese team’s athletic artistry unable to solve the problems affecting a country in the wake of a natural disaster, but also arguably able to lift battered spirits and inarguably able to remind the rest of the world of people still in need of assistance.

The debate arising after just about any memorable game involving women’s team sports, often frustrating passionate and casual fans alike , centers on the ramifications for women’s sports writ large. While there was little talk after Barcelona put on a show against Manchester United in the Champions League final about the greater meaning of the game for sports and society, there will be plenty of such conversation in the wake of Sunday’s final.

That’s unfortunate if it takes away from a game that stands on its own, from reliving thrilling, gut-wrenching moments like Wambach’s shot off the bar in the first half, the defensive lapse and attacking persistence that left Miyama alone in front of goal with the ball at her feet when Rachel Buehler’s attempted clearance ricocheted off Ali Krieger.

It’s also entirely legitimate.

All of this transpired in a tournament that came into being just two decades ago, within the lifespan of every player on the United States roster and most of those on Japan’s roster. That cannot be overstated. When Solo was born in 1981, the World Cup, even under another name at first, was 10 years away from creation. The United States national team was still five years away from playing its first match internationally. When that first World Cup took place in 1991, Florida, UCLA and USC, among many others, didn’t even have women’s soccer teams. Two decades later, those college programs had provided Wambach, Lauren Cheney and Amy Rodriguez to the national team’s front line.

Put another way, the first Women’s World Cup took place four months after Darren Clarke played in his first British Open. Looking at the product on the field Sunday and in this tournament, that’s evolution at breakneck speed.

Less than an hour after members of the Japanese team gleefully accepted their championship trophy in Frankfurt, WPS sides Western New York Flash and Sky Blue kicked off from Piscataway in a nationally televised game on Fox Soccer Channel. Odds are the ratings for that game didn’t get a huge boost from fans suddenly starving for more women’s soccer. And if history in any indication, even a chance to watch Brazil’s Marta, Canada’s Christine Sinclair and the United States’ Morgan share a field for Western New York won’t suddenly catapult the domestic professional league into the spotlight once college and (apparently) pro football begin to gear up next month.

But even if the crowds drift away and leave the passionate base to its pleasures as the WPS season continues and a college season approaches with rising stars like Melissa Henderson, Kristie Mewis and Bianca Henninger working on WNT-worthy profiles of their own, there is something happening here, just as it’s happening in professional leagues and training programs in France, England, Sweden, Japan and elsewhere around the globe.

Sunday’s game between Japan and the United States was one for the ages for reasons that had everything to do with sport and very little to do with gender or sociology.

And that’s a powerful statement in its own right.

Sunday’s game won’t change women’s sports all on its own. But women’s sports already changed games like Sunday.