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There are so many elements of the final which are memorable, though not all for the right reasons. The players, for example, were forced to warm-up inside the stadium while the third-placed match, between Brazil and Norway, was held at the same venue. A tight television schedule meant that when that game finished goalless after 90 minutes, it went straight to penalties, skipping extra-time entirely. Brazil prevailed, winning 5-4 after the spot-kicks.<\/span><\/p>\n The final itself was a cagey affair. Neither team wanted to make a mistake, with little given away by either side. Then the tide threatened to turn in China\u2019s favour, which would\u2019ve been to the disdain of most of those in attendance, the 90,000-plus creating a world-record attendance for an official women\u2019s football match that held for another 23 years.<\/span><\/p>\n Akers had to be stretchered off early in extra-time with concussion and only Lilly\u2019s instinctive clearance on the line stopped China from scoring a title-winning Golden Goal shortly after. Perhaps the legacy of this tournament would be different if the USWNT had not triumphed.<\/span><\/p>\n Then came the penalty shootout and the incredible drama it brought. For a while, no one blinked. Four penalties came and went, all successful. Then came Scurry’s crucial save, to deny Liu Ying. As long as the USWNT remained perfect, the World Cup was theirs. Lilly scored, Hamm scored, but so did Zhang Ouying and Sun Wen. So, up stepped Chastain, knowing that if she found the net, she and her team-mates would be champions of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are so many elements of the final which are memorable, though not all for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"two_page_speed":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Brandi20Chastain20Legacy20GFX.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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