Ecstasy, Agony Inspire the U.S.

There are two ways of looking at today’s USA-China world championship soccer game at the Rose Bowl.

Carla Overbeck’s way and Michelle Akers’ way.

Neither is wrong and both provide ample inspiration for American fans hoping to see the home team reclaim the Women’s World Cup it won in 1991 and lost in 1995.

For Overbeck, the U.S. co-captain, that agonizing, 1-0 defeat against Norway in the semifinals of the ’95 tournament in Sweden still rankles. That’s the memory she turns to for motivation.

“It’s a terrible feeling when you lose,” she said. “And after we had been in our own little places on the field, we came together as a group and vowed that we never wanted to feel this way again and we would never let this happen to us again.

“Losing in ’95 I think made us a lot better team. We went back and reevaluated ourselves as individuals and as a team and made some changes.

“A lot of people cried and just were upset because we had trained for so long. We obviously wanted to win that tournament. This team always wants to win. But as much as I hate to lose, I think that was probably the best thing for us. If we would have won that, we probably wouldn’t have won [the Olympic gold medal] in ’96.”

There is a lesson there for China today: Losing only makes the American players more determined. And the U.S. has lost twice to China this year.

Akers, meanwhile, looks back at 1991, when she enjoyed what she called “the best tournament of my life,” scoring 10 goals and leading the U.S. to the title.

Recapturing that level of play is vital today if the U.S. wants to win.

“I don’t think we’re completely satisfied with our performance this whole World Cup,” Akers said after the 2-0 semifinal victory over Brazil. “So I think we will be hoping to play our game [against China], and we have yet to do that for 90 minutes.”

Sooner or later, China will win the world championship. It is too good a team not to do so and it has come closer with each successive tournament.

Fifth in 1991, the Chinese were fourth in 1995 and then second in the Olympic Games in 1996. The American players realize the task facing them this afternoon in front of a sold-out Rose Bowl.

“We have so much respect for China,” Julie Foudy said. “We thought going into this tournament they were one of the best teams. They play a style we love: very technical and very fast.

“We consider ourselves--especially after losing two of the last three [to the Chinese]--to be underdogs.”

China’s 5-0 demolition of world champion Norway in the semifinals has caused concern among some U.S. fans. But Briana Scurry, the American goalkeeper, believes that result was as much due to Norway playing poorly as China playing well.

“China is an excellent team, an awesome team,” she said. “Obviously, they showed they have a lot of firepower, but it didn’t seem to me that Norway was the same team as before.”

The U.S. and China have played three times this year, and each time only one goal has separated them.

* They met in the final of the Algarve Cup in Portugal on March 20, when China emerged a 2-1 winner after Brandi Chastain blasted a penalty kick against the crossbar.

“We said in the locker room, what you do is store it,” Foudy, co-captain with Overbeck, said at the time. “You store it and you win in June and July. That’s when it counts.”

* They met in Hershey, Pa., on April 22, when the U.S. won, 2-1, after Tisha Venturini came off the bench to score the winner in the 90th minute.

* They met in East Rutherford, N.J., three days later, when China turned the tables and won, 2-1, Zhang Ouying scoring the winning goal in the 90th minute.

“China is very dangerous,” U.S. Coach Tony DiCicco said afterward. “It’s going to come down to the wire this summer.”

Summer is here, and so is the wire.

Foudy does not foresee today’s game being defensive. Neither team is likely to feel secure with a 1-0 lead.

“You’re not going to see both teams staying in the bunker,” she said, adding that the U.S. is concentrating more on its game than worrying about how the Chinese play.

“A lot of our focus is on what we need to do,” she said. “We understand their strengths and their weaknesses and we are more looking at ourselves.”

So there are two ways of looking at it: Overbeck’s way and Akers’ way.

Or perhaps there is a third.

“Really, the pressure was on us to get to the final, just to reach the final,” Tiffeny Milbrett said. “And we really earned it, there was nothing given to us.

“I’m sure we’re going to be disappointed if we don’t win, but that won’t change anything that has happened in the last three weeks. Getting here was the battle, to get to this game.

“China is going to have [scoring] chances, and the USA is going to have chances. We have to make sure we clamp down on their chances and put away ours.”

After the most recent loss to China, Mia Hamm made the U.S. agenda perfectly clear.

“We know what China is capable of and we hope to see them again in the World Cup,” she said.

That moment has arrived.

Staff writer Helene Elliott contributed to this story.

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Road to Final

The trail to the World Cup championship game for the United States and China:

UNITED STATES

* United States 3, Denmark 0

* United States 7, Nigeria 1

* United States 3, North Korea 0

* United States 3, Germany 2

* United States 2, Brazil 0

CHINA

* China 2, Sweden 1

* China 7, Ghana 0

* China 3, Australia 1

* China 2, Russia 0

* China 5, Norway 0