WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The Women’s World Cup’s longtime mentality monsters spent an hour on the ropes here Thursday.
They wavered and waffled in the Wellington wind, trailing the Netherlands and maybe, just maybe, wondering. Their audience certainly wondered. It wondered whether these U.S. women were as powerful as their predecessors; it asked the same question that Dutch coach Andries Jonker asked 24 hours earlier: “What is left of their superiority?”
It asked about talent and tactics, but more so about auras and psychology. It wondered how the USWNT would respond to falling behind in a World Cup game for the first time in 4,400 days, since a 2011 quarterfinal, when Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman were 10 and 9 years old.