PARIS — The U.S. women’s soccer team is through to the Olympic semifinals following its 1-0 extra-time victory against Japan at Parc des Princes thanks to Trinity Rodman’s left foot, a heaping dose of patience and confidence in consistency.
It wasn’t pretty football, but it was what the U.S. expected. When the players walked through the mixed zone, they didn’t care how it looked. They cared about moving on to the semifinal against Germany in Lyon. The same went for head coach Emma Hayes.
“I’m paid to do this job,” Hayes said. “What I’m interested in is what we do in-house. I’ve been coaching football matches a long time. I’ve said it from the beginning: connections help. I don’t believe we’d have gone through if we’d have made too many changes.”
With Japan in a low block and content to allow them to possess for most of regular time, the U.S. could only try pushing the ball horizontally across the back line from Emily Sonnett to Naomi Girma to Emily Fox and back. Their brief forays forward were generally rebuffed, and Japan shut down most attempts at creating any pockets of space.
By the second half of Saturday’s game, the isolated whistles from the crowd at the conservative passes between the USWNT back line had escalated into stadium-wide…
