Current time in Tokyo: July 27, 5:35 p.m.
July 27, 2021, 4:34 a.m. ET
33′ They know how close that was.
30′ THANK YOU VAR
USA seem to have the ball in the back of the net, but Alex Morgan’s header is deemed offside
???????? 0-0 ???????? #USAvAUS
— Matildas (@TheMatildas) July 27, 2021
July 27, 2021, 4:33 a.m. ET
32′ The call is confirmed after a VAR check but man, that was paper thin. Emily van Egmond, at the back post, realllllllllly looked even with Morgan there.
July 27, 2021, 4:32 a.m. ET
32′ Waiting, waiting, waiting ….
July 27, 2021, 4:32 a.m. ET
31′ GOAL?! Morgan?! Nope. Whomp whomp whomp. She is whistled for offside and the goal is erased, the fifth time that has happened to an American in two games. But wait: The replay sure looked like she was on, and we have VAR at the Games ….
July 27, 2021, 4:31 a.m. ET
30′ As the United States breaks out again, they definitely have one thing to talk about at halftime: They are allowing Australia too many 50-50 headers in the area in front of Naeher, and too much space to loft them in repeatedly. Sweden scored three goals that way, and Fowler has already hit the crossbar with one such chance.
July 27, 2021, 4:29 a.m. ET
Australia had the best chance of the first 25 minutes, Fowler’s header off the crossbar, and Morgan’s slow-motion breakaway produced a shot for the United States. But as we approach the half-hour mark the game is still scoreless in Kashima.
That is, to be clear, absolutely fine for the Americans: They know a win or a draw today gets them second place in the group, and a defined path to at least their next game. After the way this tournament began for them, that’s not a terrible thing to lock down.
July 27, 2021, 4:21 a.m. ET
18′ Australia hits the crossbar with a header! A dangerous string of looping headers finds a green-shirted body at the end, and Alyssa Naeher — thankfully — watches the ball hit the bar and come back out. The U.S. clears and exhales.
July 27, 2021, 4:28 a.m. ET
That was Mary Fowler with the header. She was a last-minute change to Australia’s announced lineup for Caitlin Foord.
July 27, 2021, 4:17 a.m. ET
14′ Sweden’s coach, the former U.S. assistant Tony Gustavsson, is up in front of his bench screaming at his forwards to get away from one another. Sweden stretched the field well that way in the opener, drawing defenders like Crystal Dunn out wide, and then carved up the United States defense in the spaces that were created.
July 27, 2021, 4:10 a.m. ET
8′ There’s our first chance, out of nothing. The U.S. wins a header, bops it out to Lavelle, who springs Morgan up the center. She looked like she ran out of steam a bit by the time she got to the penalty area, and her shot — falling down — hits goalie Teagan Micah right in the gloves.
July 27, 2021, 4:09 a.m. ET
7′ Emily van Egmond drops Ertz like a bag of rocks setting a pick on an Australian set piece. The referee saw it all, though, and had blown the whistle before the cross had even begun its descent.
July 27, 2021, 4:06 a.m. ET
5′ The U.S. back four is playing a little bit of a high line early, maybe to drag Kerr up the field a bit. But Australia just tried to spring her through the trap (Sauerbrunn cut off the pass), and that only needs to work once or twice with a player as deadly as Kerr.
July 27, 2021, 4:02 a.m. ET
The United States takes a knee before kickoff. Australia, as it has done previously, stands arms over shoulders around the center circle. Here we go.
July 27, 2021, 4:02 a.m. ET
Australia Coach Tony Gustavsson might know the United States women’s team as well as any coach in the world.
He helped the United States win an Olympic gold medal in 2012 in London as a member of the staff of the former coach Pia Sundhage. And when one of his fellow assistants from that team, Jill Ellis, took over the head job, she brought him back and together they added two World Cup titles to the Americans’ bulging trophy case.
But when Ellis left the post in 2019, Gustavsson followed her out the door. After a brief stint coaching in his native Sweden, he was hired by Australia last September. And now he is in position to use all those years of inside knowledge to work.
Gustavsson was viewed, fairly or not, as the tactical mind behind Ellis’s winning teams, and they did quite a bit of winning together. So he will know not only how the American stars like to play, but also how they don’t. He’ll know how they react to short turnarounds and how they react to bad fields (Kashima’s looks a little splotchy today, and the tropical storm that swept through here on Monday night surely didn’t help matters). He’ll be aware of their collective and individual strengths, and — perhaps more important — their weaknesses.
All of that could all be valuable information with so much on the line today.
July 27, 2021, 3:57 a.m. ET
The teams are coming out of the tunnel. Sauerbrunn leads the U.S. out first. Kerr is at the head of the Australia line. The United States is in all white today; the Matildas are green with yellow accents.
July 27, 2021, 3:57 a.m. ET
Ibaraki Kashima Stadium is another of these lovely Japanese stadiums that deserved a better fate than an empty-seat Games. The stadium’s rising and falling swirl of a roof — think of a bigger Red Bull Arena — holds about 41,000 on a good day. Today? A few hundred schoolchildren have been invited to watch.
July 27, 2021, 3:55 a.m. ET
Rotating players is always part and parcel of an Olympic tournament, where games come fast and off days are rare. So the United States knew even before the tournament whom it planned to start, and when those players might sit, in its group games.
The changes continue against Australia. Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan return to the starting lineup, joining Christen Press in a redrawn forward line. Sam Mewis returns in midfield, replacing Lindsey Horan, and will team with Julie Ertz and Rose Lavelle. (Watch how Mewis and Ertz line up early, since both can play defensive roles but don’t have to do so.)
On the back line, Crystal Dunn becomes the only defender to keep her place for all three games. Becky Sauerbrunn and Kelley O’Hara are back, and Tierna Davidson takes over for Abby Dahlkemper as Sauerbrunn’s partner.
Australia, meanwhile, has made only two changes from its loss against Sweden on Saturday.
July 27, 2021, 3:21 a.m. ET
Sam Kerr remains the player to watch for Australia, always, and that’s not just true for Davidson and Sauerbrunn. It takes a village to stop Sam Kerr from getting a couple goals.
July 27, 2021, 3:20 a.m. ET
The United States starting lineup is out. Among the changes: Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan are restored to the front line, Sam Mewis returns in midfield (Lindsey Horan sits) and Tierna Davidson, who played well against New Zealand, will partner with Becky Sauerbrunn in central defense.
July 27, 2021, 3:18 a.m. ET
Small rosters are traditionally one of the quirks of the Olympic tournament. Teams that are used to carrying 23 players for a big tournament are limited to 18 at the Games, and then must rotate those to their best efficiency in the compressed schedule of a fast-moving tournament.
This year, those roster rules have been modified. In addition to their full 18-player rosters, teams were allowed to bring four alternates, who could be named to a game day roster at any time.
The change — in place only for the pandemic-era Tokyo Games — has given the teams and their coaches quite a bit of flexibility. The United States, for example, listed Jane Campbell, Casey Krueger and Catarina Macario on its 18-player match day roster against New Zealand on Saturday. (Macario and Krueger even came on as late substitutes.)
It was not a meaningless gesture, either. According to the International Olympic Committee’s rules for the tournament, a player must be listed on a match day roster to be considered an Olympian and receive a medal if her team wins one. Macario, Krueger and Campbell now meet that criteria.
So if you see Lynn Williams on the bench against Australia, know it could be for the same reason.
July 27, 2021, 2:31 a.m. ET
The United States women’s soccer team would prefer not to ponder any possibility except a victory when it faces Australia in its third game of the Olympics at Ibaraki Kashima Stadium, but nonetheless there are a few.
The good news for the United States is that it is extremely hard to get eliminated from the Olympic tournament in the group stage. Eight of the 12 teams entered will move on — the top two teams in three groups and the best two third-place finishers — and only a catastrophic set of results would see the Americans go out today.
(Fair warning: I have seen just such a thing happen in real time before, a fact not lost on any U.S. soccer fan, so never say never. But set that aside for now.)
Here are the current group standings:
Team, W-L-T, Points, Goal Difference
Sweden, 2-0-0, 6 points, +5
United States, 1-1-0, 3 points, +2
Australia, 1-1-0, 3 points, +1
New Zealand, 0-2-0, 0 points, -6
Sweden will win the group barring a stunning, lopsided defeat against New Zealand. It can expect to play a third-place finisher in the quarterfinals.
The United States will finish second with a win or a tie. The second-place finisher in this group, though, could have a tough road: a likely matchup against the Netherlands, a 2019 World Cup finalist and the top-scoring team in the Olympic tournament, or Brazil, a tough opponent on any day.
A loss is where it gets nervy for the United States. An Australia victory would leave the United States in third place and sweating out its next opponent for a few hours. A second loss in three games would also leave the players and Coach Vlatko Andonovski stewing over some uncomfortable questions.
July 27, 2021, 2:16 a.m. ET
The United States has played Australia 30 times, and has a record of 26 wins, three ties and a single defeat in those matches. Pretty good, right?
Recent results tell a different story. Australia is 1-1-1 in its last three matches against the United States, it is the last team to beat the United States on home soil, and it boasts one of the best strikers in the world in Sam Kerr.
Kerr has three goals already at the Tokyo Games, and she missed a penalty against Sweden — with a chance to tie the match — that might have had the Matildas in a different position entering today.
Australia is a talented, experienced team, and also a younger one than the United States on balance, and it doesn’t shy away from a fight. Do not expect a walkover, especially with Kerr out there hunting goals.
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