In the seventh round of a penalty shoot-out, Sweden’s Lina Hurtig lined up against Alyssa Naeher, a spot in the World Cup quarterfinals on the line. For two hours—regulation and extra time—neither team had been able to score. The shoot-out had been nervy so far, Sweden matching the United States miss for miss, goal for goal—from newcomers and seasoned players alike. Kelley O’Hara, a veteran for the U.S. team who had been called on in the waning minute of extra time in order to be eligible for penalties, had just bounced her attempt off the post. Hurtig, a lanky forward with a prow of bright-blond hair, loped toward the ball and sent a low, hard shot. Naeher dived and blocked the ball, which popped high into the air and spun back toward the goal. Naeher scrambled off her back, trying to bat the ball out before it crossed the line. She gestured to signal that the save was made, but it was hard to tell.

There was disbelief in that gesture, as well as certainty, or perhaps a refusal to believe any other outcome than a U.S. win. The U.S. had survived many close calls in its glorious past. It had narrowly made it through the group stage, after a shot by Portugal in second-half stoppage time hit the post, preserving a 0–0 tie that sent the U.S. into the knockout. There had been many other incredible moments over the years: close games at the 2015 World Cup, which the U.S. had gone on to win; a game-winning header in the final possible minute of the semifinals at the 2012 Olympics; Brandi Chastain’s penalty kick to win the 1999 World Cup, one of the most transformative moments in the history of the sport. That ability to forge a way to win under immense pressure has been, in fact, the hallmark of the U.S. women’s national team. As they said repeatedly in the days leading up to Sunday’s Round of 16 match against Sweden, never count the U.S. women out.

The U.S. had come into the tournament as the top-ranked team in the world. It was favored to win, which would make it the first team in history to win a third straight World Cup; it had never finished lower than third. The team had long ago achieved icon status, representing more than just a soccer team. It was a symbol of women’s empowerment, of excellence. It was a symbol of supreme self-confidence, of dominance.

And yet there was a growing sense that that confidence, that supreme self-belief, had become something more stubborn than secure, more willful than strong-willed. “I just have blind confidence,” Megan Rapinoe had said after the game against Portugal. It would get better. “It just has to. It just has to.”

But of course it didn’t have to. There was a long, tense moment as the referee waited for confirmation of the goal. Finally, she signalled that Hurtig had scored. In the end, the margin of Sweden’s victory over the United States was measured by mere millimetres. But for the U.S. it might as well have been miles, so far was it from its goal of winning the World Cup.

To say that the early exit was stunning is an understatement. Even FIFA had organized the Cup around the expectation of a long U.S. run, Yahoo! Sports reported, scheduling the tournament so that probable U.S. games would appear in the best possible windows for American TV audiences. And yet an early loss had come to seem almost inevitable. Even before Sunday’s game, postmortems of this U.S. women’s national team were already being published. They were disjointed on the field. They were poorly coached. They lacked a clear identity. They were too old; they were too young. Their coach, Vlatko Andonovski, had not made proper tactical adjustments. The players were not executing, were struggling to complete passes, were randomly booting balls out of bounds. They did not have the right mentality. They did not have the right strategy. Injuries to key players in the months leading up to the tournament had been catastrophic. The depth of the team was not being properly utilized. And so on.

There was truth to all of it. In recent days, it was becoming increasingly clear that the “blind confidence” described by Rapinoe was more blind than confident. It sounded like bluster—necessary, perhaps, coming from one of the team’s longtime leaders, but it wasn’t in line with the reality of the team’s performance, not just in this tournament but in the past couple of years. Sweden, after all, had beaten the U.S. 3–0 at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, and, after losing to Canada in the semifinals, the U.S. had walked away with a disappointing bronze. Last fall, for the first time in thirty years, the team had lost three games in a row. And in the lead-up to the Cup it became clear that key players, including Mallory Swanson, Becky Sauerbrunn, Sam Mewis, and Catarina Macario, wouldn’t be available for selection because of injuries. The stars of the past generation, such as Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, are too close to the end of their careers; the stars of the next, such as Naomi Girma, Alyssa Thompson, Sophia Smith, and Trinity Rodman, are too close to the beginning of theirs. If the team looked at times as if it was playing together for the first time, that was because, in fact, it was.

Still, the U.S. has the deepest pool of talent in the world, one of the strongest domestic leagues, and a standard of sustained excellence. It was up to the coach, Andonovski, to find the right fit. He had failed, and even the best players he put on the pitch consistently seemed diminished, rather than enhanced, by the presence of the others. They lacked their characteristic relentlessness. They lacked joy.

The U.S. came into the game against Sweden knowing that it needed to show something different than it had in the group stages, and it did. Andonovski—finally, according to his many critics—changed the formation. It seemed to work. Girma, the one bright light all tournament, seemed to have options in opening up the field. For the first time, the midfield looked impactful. Rodman excelled early, using her quick accelerations to unsettle Sweden’s defense, and her replacement in the second half, Lynn Williams, brought fresh energy and pressure on the field. Lindsey Horan was able to play more of an attacking role, and had an excellent game, including some spectacular shots on goal. But Sweden’s goalkeeper, Zećira Mušović, was even better. Eleven of the U.S.’s shots were on target; Mušović saved Sweden’s chances many times. Still, for all the pressure made by the U.S. attack, there was never a sense that the dam would surely break.

It is, after all, cohesiveness that has generally carried the U.S. team—not any particular national strategy or style. The players shared a competitive mentality, a pride and sense of purpose, a faith. Their familiarity was traditionally honed by long stretches of training and competitive play. In that, too, this tournament was different; one player, Savannah DeMelo, was named to the team without even a single national-team cap. She started the first two games and looked understandably overwhelmed before she was benched. Of all the stats that explain the U.S.’s failures, one that stands out is that before the 2019 World Cup, when the U.S. romped to the championship, the team had spent thirty-six days in training camp together and played three friendlies. Before this World Cup, as the Wall Street Journal noted, it spent twenty-six days together and played just one friendly.

That may be, oddly, a sign of the sport’s health—at home and abroad. The National Women’s Soccer League has grown stronger in recent years, and the U.S. Soccer Federation has taken a step back from its operating and financial roles. Club teams are offering bigger salaries, both in the U.S. and abroad, and have taken on more importance. Not many people may remember that Alex Morgan once played for the Western New York Flash in the now defunct Women’s Professional Soccer league, but it may be that Sophia Smith will be known someday as much as a star for the Portland Thorns as for the U.S. national team. As the N.W.S.L. is increasing in size, skill, and ambition, so are the leagues in Europe. Wembley Stadium has sold out for Chelsea’s and Manchester United’s womens’ teams. More than ninety thousand fans have filled Camp Nou to watch the Barcelona Femení. And these club teams are stocked with players from around the world, which has elevated other national teams, too. The gap between the traditional powerhouses of the sport and the rest of the world is rapidly closing. Colombia, Jamaica, Morocco, South Africa, and Nigeria made it out of the group stages at this World Cup; Germany, the second-ranked team in the world, did not. One could make a credible list of the top players in the world that does not include anyone from the current U.S. team, surely for the first time in history. It may be that women’s soccer will start to look more like men’s, where, besides the World Cup, international games seem more like pauses in league calendars, not the main event.

The U.S. team has always embraced its challenges. Its edge of confidence has been hard won—honed against opposition not only on the field but also from its own federation, and from its resilience after failures, too. Now a new generation of players is facing defeat. What they do with it will determine the future of the program. But it is, perhaps perversely, partly to their credit—by their efforts on the field and off, in their pursuit of equal pay and fair conditions—that their loss shouldn’t be seen as a referendum on the potential power of women’s soccer. Maybe the opposite. ♦