I feel by pointing this out that Alex Morgan will understand I’m only doing what she would expect me to do: treat her exactly as I would a man.
The U.S. Women’s national team plays the Netherlands on Sunday in the final step toward defending its Women’s World Cup championship. The team has been besieged by criticism, quite literally, from the first moment it walked on the pitch in France.
Some of it, to these ears, was silly: When the U.S. ran up a 13-0 win over Thailand in the first game, they were treated like a tee-ball team managed by Vic Morrow running up the score — silly given that this is a gathering of the world’s best teams, and also because goal differential is a standard for tiebreakers.