After landing the winning kick in a penalty shootout, Megan Rapinoe celebrated the victory over the Netherlands with her teammates. The U.S. women’s soccer team kept its hopes for gold alive and advanced to the semifinals of the Olympic soccer tournament. You can win a shootout early, if one team misses a few, or it can go on forever . A United States victory could push all of that back, again, and re-energize a program that seems to set the standard, and then meet every challenge in the nick of time. But a United States defeat, and a second straight medal-free Olympic trip, could mean something else entirely.

Source: International New York Times July 30, 2021 09:22 UTC