It was seven years ago that Japan stunned the United States women’s national team in a World Cup final. A game in which the Americans possessed the bigger, faster, stronger athletes was instead won with tactical and technical aptitude.
Nearly a decade later, the effects of that loss remain present. A lesson that their athletic supremacy and physicality alone would no longer be sufficient, the U.S. turned to improving their own tactics and technical approach. And it hasn’t lost to Japan since.
That streak continued Thursday in Kansas City.
Alex Morgan scored a hat trick, leading the U.