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The last time Sophia Smith put on her U.S. national team jersey and sobbed, she felt “heartbroken.”
It was August 6, 2023, and six months later, memories of Melbourne still haunted her.
She scored a penalty on the biggest stage of her career, in the Round of 16 shootout of the Women’s World Cup. In her ugly tear-stained aftermath, she collapsed into the arms of her teammates. She still remembers all those complicated and incomprehensible emotions. Burning spotlights, noise, pain. Since then, she has been “trying to get back on track.”
“It’s mentally taxing to miss a penalty in the World Cup,” Smith said Wednesday night.
That’s why after she scored, she fell to her knees and then sobbed again. The hope was that it would wipe her vestiges of the World Cup from her psyche.
In the 99th minute of a tight, wet World Gold Cup semifinal, Smith scored a flick off Rose Lavelle to put the USWNT ahead of Canada. She turned her around and ran, but after her five celebratory steps she sank towards the ground and her overjoyed teammates choked her. Several people, including Lovell, Lindsey Horan and Lynn Williams, witnessed and shared Smith’s raw emotion last summer. They have seen her “sacrifice” in recent months. And there, on a wet patch of San Diego grass, they saw it snap.
Canada finally tied the game with a penalty kick in the 127th minute. The USWNT’s first shootout since Australia was looming.
And in Melbourne, behind a stunned stadium, Smith did exactly what some of her teammates had urged her to do.
“What I told her is that the best players in the world miss penalties,” Horan said after the World Cup loss to Sweden. “that worst. It’s just the worst. But what you have to remember is that this is also part of football. I’ll get back on my feet. And it hurts. You’ll be hurt, forever. …Soph will get over it. she is strong she is strong willed.And she’s one of the best players in the world right now at her age. [then 22]. She’ll be completely fine. ”
Naomi Girma, Smith’s friend and former college teammate, said: “Every time I’m going to be rooting for her to take a shot or take a penalty kick, and I hope she does that too.” ” he added.
She endorsed herself Wednesday night. She did herself a favor, okay. She didn’t just volunteer to kick in a gunfight. She stood up to take her first one.
“I was so proud of her,” Horan told CBS Sports afterward.
Smith calmly converted the penalty into the bottom corner.
After Alyssa Neher made three saves to seal the victory for the United States, she burst into tears.
“This just shows you how much it means to wear this emblem, to take on that responsibility, and to live up to that responsibility,” USWNT coach Twyla Kilgore said. .
It also reflected the turmoil of the past eight months for Smith.
“It’s emotional,” Smith said in a postgame interview with CBS. “It’s been very emotional for me personally since the World Cup, so this is just a huge relief and I couldn’t be more proud of our team.”
She struggled with the injury for several months after returning from Australia and New Zealand. Her team, the reigning National Women’s Soccer League champion Portland Thorns, fell to Gotham in the NWSL semifinals. “It’s just sad,” Smith said that night.
She returned to the national team in October and November, and again this month ahead of the Gold Cup. But she never resembled her bubbly and talented self before the World Cup. She failed to score in the first four games of the tournament, making her first four official appearances for the USWNT since Melbourne. She was sent off at halftime of the 2-0 loss to Mexico and was on the bench for the quarterfinal match against Colombia. Ever since the pressure of the World Cup became extreme with magazine covers and Nike campaigns, she has never been the same.
But she never faltered or despaired.
She vowed to learn from the whole experience.
She said on the podcast “The Women’s Game” last month. “I learned a lot about myself: how different kinds of pressures affect me, how to deal with them, what I need to listen to, what I need to confide in. I learned that it goes in one ear and goes out the other. And that’s kind of how you navigate the outside world in a big tournament like that. ”
What she desperately needed was a goal for this month. moment. It’s a release. Wednesday night, in the USWNT’s biggest game since their biggest failure, it finally happened.
Memories of Melbourne aren’t completely erased. “That’s something I have to live with,” Smith said on the podcast.
But “that goal took away a lot of emotions,” she said Wednesday.
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