US Team Knocked Out of World Cup After Dramatic Penalty Shootout Against Sweden

The best player of the match? Swedish goalie Zecira Musovic.

Megan Rapinoe following their loss to Sweden in the Women's World Cup. Scott Barbour/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Fans of the United States women’s soccer team who woke up at the crack of dawn to watch its match against Sweden had a disappointing morning. After a scoreless game and two 15-minute periods of extra time, the reigning US squad lost to Sweden in Melbourne on Sunday morning in a dramatic 5-4 penalty shootout. The early elimination in round 16 marks the US team’s worst World Cup performance and a heartbreaking farewell to Megan Rapinoe, who is retiring after her fourth and final tournament. 

The two-time defending champions failed to present their best soccer throughout the competition. They finished the group stage in second place to face Sweden, the third best ranked team in the world. The Swedes had won all the Group G matches and will now take on Japan, who beat Norway 3-1, for the semifinals. Spain also moved on after a decisive 5-1 win against Switzerland and the Netherlands eliminated South Africa. This World Cup has been marked by the surprising eliminations of favorites, including Brazil and Germany. 

The Sunday match, the longest in women’s World Cup history, marked the seventh World Cup encounter between the longtime rivals, but the first in the knockout rounds. The US squad dominated in terms of ball possession and had more opportunities to score but found an impenetrable wall in the Swedish goalkeeper Zecira Musovic, who may have just played the match of her life with at least 11 saves. During the penalty shootout, veterans Rapinoe and Kelley O’Hara missed their kicks, as did forward Sophia Smith.

“First and foremost I’m so proud of the team,” co-captain Lindsey Horan said after the game. “A lot went into this performance and it was kind of changing gears and playing like us, and playing our style, being confident, patient, all those things. We went out and did it. I think we played beautiful football today and we entertained and we created chances. We didn’t score. And this is part of the game.” Her co-captain Alex Morgan said she was devastated and compared the post-defeat feeling to “a bad dream.” Defender Julie Ertz said she was proud of the way the team played, adding that this was likely her last appearance with the squad. “It’s an honor to represent this team,” she told a reporter, “and I’m excited for the future of these girls.” 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate