It was quite a match!
The Americans towered over the relatively short Japanese team, but the women in blue held their own quite well. Granted, the Americans produced fancier attacks on goal, and when they scored the first goal, it seemed doubtful that the Japanese could come back. But the Japanese defense held it together, and their attackers continued to generate decent goal chances. Then, when Japan scored their first goal, it was clear that they had no intention of letting the Americans win the tournament easily.
The game's extra time was nail-biting good soccer. Both teams generated good scoring chances, and play kept moving up and down the field. The US scored their second goal relatively late, and again, it seemed that Japan would have a tough time tying up the game. But tie it up they did, scoring a goal that wasn't that pretty, but that was nonetheless the result of hard work in front of the US net.
And so came the penalty kicks. Japan's goal keeper, Ayumi Kaihori, did a great job defending her goal, stopping one shot by lifting up her foot as she dove horizontally!
Congratulations Japan!
There's a nice summary of the game here.
And also, an interesting article about it published in a Korean paper here.
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