Thembi Kgatlana had time to pull off one more trick, to take one more shot, to send one more jolt of electricity through the crowd. She had been running, by that stage, for roughly 100 minutes, mounting what appeared at times to be a fearsome, one-woman campaign to keep South Africa in the Women’s World Cup for as long as possible.
By that stage, even she would have conceded that it was over. The Netherlands had a two-goal lead, and somewhere in the region of 30 seconds to survive. But Kgatlana, as she had already amply proved in this tournament, does not believe in stopping.
And so she picked up the ball, midway inside the Dutch half, and set out to “cause havoc,” as she put it, once more. First, she spun and writhed and twisted away from a defender, leaving her sprawled on the turf.
Then, her line of sight momentarily clear, she lined up to shoot from 25 yards. Stefanie van der Gragt stepped in the way of the shot. It caught her square in the face. The ball’s altered trajectory might have taken it anywhere. This time, it slithered just wide of Daphne van Domselaar’s goal.
It was that sort of game for South Africa, the kind of occasion when any number of things might have gone ever so slightly differently and a whole other world might have opened up. The Netherlands,…
