DECINES-CHARPIEU, France — In the past eight weeks, Emma Hayes has managed to do what the last two coaches of the women’s national soccer team couldn’t do in the past eight years, which is get the U.S. to the gold-medal match in the Olympic Games.
The Americans accomplished that Tuesday, advancing to the final of the Paris Games with a 1-0 extra-time win over Germany before a sparse crowd at Stade de Lyon, where the U.S. won its last World Cup in 2019.
The game-winner came five minutes into the first 15-minute overtime after Mallory Swanson pushed a deft right-footed pass forward for Sophia Smith, who feigned to the inside then went to the outside to shed German defender Felicitas Rauch before lifting a right-footed shot over keeper Ann-Katrin Berger.
The game-winning goal was Smith’s third of the tournament, tying Swanson and Trinity Rodman for the team lead. And U.S. keeper Alyssa Naeher made that stand up, turning back six shots — including a key save with her foot off a Laura Freigang header deep in the second extra period — for her third clean sheet of the Olympics. She has given up just one goal in the past 398 minutes.
The U.S. will face the winner of Tuesday night’s second semifinal between Spain, the reigning World Cup champions, and Brazil on Saturday in Paris to decide the gold and silver medals.
The Olympic final was once considered the domain of the U.S. national team, which played for the gold medal in each of the first five women’s Olympic tournaments, winning four of them. But the last trip came in 2012, with the U.S. losing in the quarterfinals in Rio de Janeiro and in the semifinals in Tokyo.
Hayes got them back there in just her eighth game as a national team coach.
But it wasn’t easy against a German team missing captain Alexandra Popp to illness and veteran forward Lea Schuller, its leading scorer in France, with an inflamed tendon in her left knee.
Despite that, the 2016 Olympic champions, ranked fourth in the world by FIFA, a spot ahead of the U.S., kept the Americans off the board for 95 minutes with Berger making seven saves.
American Mallory Swanson drives the ball next to Germany’s Elisa Senss and Janina Minge during a 2024 Summer Olympics semifinal soccer match Tuesday at Lyon Stadium in Decines, France.
(Laurent Cipriani / Associated Press)
The U.S. was playing its fifth game in 13 days — and its second extra-time game in four days — in the heat and humidity of the French summer. Yet Hayes again proved reluctant to use her bench, making just one substitution before the 60th minute and just two in regulation.
Perhaps as a result the U.S. looked a step slow all evening against the short-handed Germans, who they routed 4-1 in the group stage.
The U.S. had the best chance for either team in the first 79 minutes and that came just after the hour mark when a pass from Naomi Girma — who repeatedly saved the U.S. on defense — found Swanson dashing into the box. Swanson rounded Berger, leaving her with an open net to shoot at, but her right-footed try from a tough angle went into the side netting.
Captain Lindsay Horan had the next best chance late in regulation with a diving header that Berger had to reach out to grab. Seven minutes later Swanson, who had a rough match until assisting on the game-winning score, finally found the back of the net after a Crystal Dunn pass launched her on a breakaway. But she was clearly offsides on the play.
The U.S.-German semifinal was the fourth of five games in the knockout stages of the Olympic tournament to go to extra time. Two of them, including Germany’s quarterfinal win over Canada, were decided in penalty kicks.