A Knock-Out World Cup

Hard tackles and dazzling dribbles — the group stage produced delightful football but was riddled with surprises. Two-time champions Germany, eye-pleasing Brazil and Tokyo Olympics gold medal winners Canada are back home. Co-hosts New Zealand have also bowed out of the contest. With two draws out of 3 games, reigning world champions US laboured for a place in the pre-quarters. It gets tougher as the 9th edition of the Women’s World Cup enters the knock-outs. It is make-or-break time. Live action is available. Keep kebabs and beverages by your side. And get ready for more surprisesMedium108412039 Three fab goals from the group stage 1. Beatriz: Brazil vs Panama: Swift inter-passing, two delightful back-heels and an irrefutable finish on the sidefoot, Brazil displayed super teamwork to score this most attractive team goal against PanamaMedium108412040 2. Esmee Brugts: Netherlands vs Vietnam: The 20-year-old curled in two goals with speed and accuracy that would have made Thierry Henry proudMedium108412041 3. Linda Caicedo: Colombia vs Germany: The 18-year-old, who played in India during the under-17 World Cup last year, conjured a bit of Latin American individual magic. Her nimble footwork enabled her to create space between two German defenders before her emphatic strike sailed past the keeperMedium108412042 The Samba is Over Marta, regarded by some as the greatest woman footballer ever, retired from the game. The 37-year-old Brazilian played in six World Cups and shares the world record for most goals with Canada’s Christine Sinclair.Medium108412043 Iconic Moment, Indelible Memory In the 1999 World Cup final, US footballer Brandi Chastain scored the decisive penalty to defeat China, 5-4, in the final in front of 90,125 fans at the Rose Bowl, the largest official crowd ever to watch a women’s football game.Medium108412045 “In that pivotal moment of arrival for women’s team sports in the US and around the world, viewers saw Chastain removing her jersey and twirling it like a lariat, spinning around and falling to her knees, pumping her arms in exultant triumph. Medium108412046 What resulted was perhaps the most iconic photograph ever taken of a female athlete, a depiction of pure spontaneous joy,” sports reporter Jere Longman wrote in The New York Times 20 years later.Medium108412047 He further wrote, “It was a moment of freedom and liberation, Marlene Bjornsrud, a longtime women’s coach and an influential sports executive, once told me. She called it a “casting off the burden of everything that kept us down and said, ‘You can’t do that because you are a woman.’ It was a moment that screamed, ‘Yes, I can’.”