The U.S. women’s national soccer team beat Australia 4-3, securing the Olympic bronze medal for the World Cup winners.
Thursday’s win saw two goals each from Carli Lloyd and captain Megan Rapinoe. The game, played at Ibaraki Kashima Stadium, followed a shocking semifinal loss to Canada, knocking the United States out of their quest for gold. The team was hoping to clinch the Olympic gold as a follow-up to their 2019 Women’s World Cup victory — something that’s never been done before.
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Headed home with a medal! ???? Proud of our fight, proud of our response. @TeamUSA | #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/SvbUx3VfT9
— U.S. Soccer WNT (@USWNT) August 5, 2021
While they failed to reach the gold medal match this year, the U.S. women’s team has reached it five times, winning gold in 1996, 2004, 2008, and 2012. They took home silver in 2002.
The team has made headlines over the past few years for political demonstrations and its outspoken members, most notably Rapinoe, who has become famous for her social activism.
Many conservatives seized on the team’s loss to Canada to mock them for their previous political demonstrations, including kneeling during the U.S. national anthem.
At the beginning of the Tokyo Olympics, the team was one of several to take the knee on the field ahead of their matches on the opening day. The decision followed that of the British women’s soccer team, who knelt in protest alongside their Chilean opponents.
“Taking the knee was something we spoke about as a group. We feel so strongly, and we want to show we’re united,” said Great British team captain Steph Houghton, after her team bested Chile 2-0.
“As a squad, it’s been a subject that we’ve spoken about for a few weeks now,” Houghton continued. “We want to fight all forms of discrimination, and as a group of women, we wanted to kneel against it.”
“It was a proud moment because the Chile players took the knee too to show how united we are as a sport,” she added.
Following their 2019 World Cup victory, the U.S. women’s team preemptively refused an invitation to the White House. They have also publicly feuded with former President Donald Trump.
Trump railed against the team’s bronze medal win, saying that being “woke” results in losing.
“If our soccer team, headed by a radical group of Leftist Maniacs, wasn’t woke, they would have won the Gold Medal instead of the Bronze,” he said in a Thursday tweemail. “Woke means you lose, everything that is woke goes bad, and our soccer team certainly has. There were, however, a few Patriots standing. Unfortunately, they need more than that respecting our Country and National Anthem. They should replace the wokesters with Patriots and start winning again. The woman with the purple hair played terribly and spends too much time thinking about Radical Left politics and not doing her job!”
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Rapinoe has made equal pay a cornerstone of her public activism, speaking extensively about the gap in salary between male and female professional athletes and has attributed the much smaller pay for women in sports to misogyny. Earlier this year, the star soccer player spoke at a Biden administration Equal Pay Day event, criticizing “inequality” and “discrimination” in pay.
