"Penalties are always a game of chance, turning 120 minutes into a matter of inches. For the U.S. women’s national team, those inches, or even a single millimeter, mattered the most on Sunday as it bowed out of the World Cup to Sweden at the quarter-final stage with a 5-4 loss in penalties. These penalties were unlike most that we’ve seen from the U.S. Megan Rapinoe missed for the first time in years. Alyssa Naeher stepped up and scored as a surprise sixth selection. Sophia Smith, whose form going into the tournament had been red hot, missed hers as well. Any of those moments could easily have been the biggest takeaway from this shootout were it not for what happened at the very end, as goal-line technology decided the end of the shootout when Naeher couldn’t get a palm on the winning spot kick in time after parrying upward on the initial effort. ...”
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