Even in the highest-resolution image, examined up close, there was not so much as a discernible sliver of daylight. The margin by which the United States was eliminated from the Women’s World Cup was so microscopic that it cannot be expressed in a unit of measurement the country fully recognizes.
A millimeter, a single millimeter, is no more than 0.04 inches, yet even that most slender gap can serve as the gossamer border between two realities. Such is the unspoken truth of sports, of course: The difference between triumph and disaster, delight and dismay, can be far thinner than we choose to pretend.
For the United States, there is some comfort in that. “It is tough to have your World Cup end by a millimeter,” Alyssa Naeher, the U.S. goalkeeper, said after her team’s loss to Sweden in a penalty shootout Sunday. It does not take an especially vivid imagination to envision how the outcome might have been different.
Had Naeher intercepted Lina Hurtig’s shot at a slightly different angle, maybe the spin would have carried the ball to safety. Had Hurtig struck her penalty more softly, or more firmly, maybe Naeher would have saved it more decisively. Granted a reprieve, maybe the United States would have gone on to win that game in the round of 16, the tournament, the…
