Women’s World Cup: U.S. Rallies to Tie Netherlands on Second-Half Goal From Horan (2024)

They pushed and they shoved. They gave as well as they got. They traded shots and then they traded goals. But through 90 supremely physical — and at times thrilling — minutes on Thursday, the United States and the Netherlands could not separate themselves at the Women’s World Cup.

And so they walked off after the most eagerly anticipated game of the group stage with a 1-1 draw that will have to be good enough.

The current standings in Group E:

United States, 4 points, plus-3 goal difference

Netherlands, 4 points, plus-1 goal difference

Portugal, 0 points, minus-1 goal difference

Vietnam, 0 points, minus-3 goal difference

Portugal and Vietnam play next in Hamilton.

The top two teams in the group will advance, but winning the group has its advantages: The runner-up will most likely earn a round-of-16 date with Sweden, a top contender, while the group winner has an easier road.

Full time in Wellington: U.S. 1, Netherlands 1. Start crunching the math, because Group E is probably going to be settled by goal difference.

90′ +3 That was a wicked head-to-head collision between Rose Lavelle and Danielle van de Donk, who stayed down for a few minutes while the Dutch trainers tended to her. She is staying in.

90′ +1 Five minutes of stoppage time added. The U.S. continues to press. The Netherlands continues to chase. The score continues to be 1-1.

84′ The chances are coming fast now as the U.S. chases a winner. Rodman’s shot is quickly followed by a fizzed screamer from Andi Sullivan at the top of the penalty area off yet another corner. Feels like something’s brewing here …

81′ Sophia Smith led Trinity Rodman with a perfect pass, but Rodman curled the shot just wide of the post. Missed out on an ideal chance to score and lift the U.S. team.

80′ Oooooh that was a close call for the U.S. defense: Jill Roord slides a ball straight through the middle, and Esmee Brugts appears to have it lined up for the second goal, but Julie Ertz slides in out of nowhere to save the day.

Mere minutes after Lindsey Horan was jerked to the ground by Danielle van de Donk, and mere seconds after the referee admonished them both, Horan soared above a crowd in the box and tied the score at 1-1 with a powerful header off Rose Lavelle’s corner.

The morals of the story, friends: Don’t make Lindsey mad, and good things tend to happen when Lavelle plays against the Netherlands in the World Cup (see: final, 2019).

Horan’s goal, in the 62nd minute, came on the Americans’ seventh corner kick of the match, and supplied hope and relief all at once after a desultory first half.

75′ Trinity Rodman, like Sophia Smith a few minutes ago, takes a dangerous ball down the wing, creating a chance, and then wastes it by dawdling on the ball. The Netherlands is covering well, and its defenders are far too experienced to give the U.S. wings time to pick them apart. The time just isn’t going to be there.

73′ It goes without saying Rose Lavelle has changed the game with a solid first 20 minutes off the bench: Her corners have been consistently dangerous, she got a yellow to send a message and then she dropped a perfect ball onto Lindsey Horan’s forehead for the U.S. goal.

67′ GOAL? Alex Morgan makes it 2-1 for the U.S., off a lovely cross into her path from Trinity Rodman.

But the celebration is over before it starts: The flag is up for offside.

66′ One has to wonder if this game, rough and tumble and not a little bit nasty at times, will dial back a bit now that it’s tied. Don’t bet on it, given how the first hour went.

The ref, Yoshimi Yamash*ta, spent a few minutes lecturing Lindsay Horan and Danielle van de Donk, bringing a bunch of players from both teams to gather around them. Whatever the ref said seemed to rev up Horan. She scored on the next play. Take that, van de Donk.

What a response by Lindsey Horan, who dusted herself off when the trainers left, marched right into the crowd in front of the goal and ran straight on to Rose Lavelle’s header. The relief in that U.S. celebration, and among the American supporters in the stands, is palpable here.

62′ GOAL! The U.S. scores a header off Lavelle’s corner, and we’re tied in Wellington.

60′ Horan goes down in a heap in front of the U.S. bench under a challenge from Danielle van de Donk. Her treatment gives the entire U.S. coaching staff a chance to lay out the persistent unfairness of the world to the referee, Yoshimi Yamash*ta. But she’s not having it.

54′ The Netherlands has alternately looked supremely cool — passing the ball about, accepting fouls, controlling the play — and then chaotic in defense, leaving open spaces for Horan and Rodman, for two, and flailing at clearances as if it’s the last minute, not the 54th. The U.S., meanwhile, is turning up the pressure.

50′ This referee loves to give warnings. Sophia Smith just got the latest, for a foul in midfield. At some point, the ref is going to need to pull out a yellow.

46′ The second half is underway with only the two subs.

You’ve got to think that the Dutch — players and fans alike — are looking at Rose Lavelle and thinking, “Oh, no, not her.” In the 2019 World Cup final, Lavelle dribbled through a bunch of Dutch defenders to score and extend the Americans’ lead to 2-0. That was the U.S. team’s second straight World Cup title.

Rose Lavelle has stripped off her warmups and is loosening at the center of the field, so we may have a change coming at halftime. She’s not the first person one thinks of when one hears “intensely physical midfield battle” but she is the person who might shake up the offense and create something.

A team can prepare for a lot of things — tactics, lineups, weather — but not for a slip. Slips happen, and when the U.S. left back, Crystal Dunn, slipped and fell as the Netherlands swept forward in the 17th minute, it set off a scramble that has the United States trailing, 1-0, at halftime.

Jill Roord scored that goal, the product of some quick thinking and a bit of good fortune, and it has changed a game that was expected to be tight and physical and even, and has delivered on every front.

HALFTIME: Netherlands 1, United States 0. A testy, physical half with plenty of chances for the U.S., but only one goal, and it wasn’t theirs.

45 + 4’ Savannah DeMelo, yanked down multiple times this half, just swiped at Danielle van de Donk, dragging her to the grass in what could be viewed as frustration, fatigue or a healthy combination of the two.

The Americans never trail in a World Cup. Like, never. But now they do, for the first time in their last 18 matches in the competition, because the Netherlands sliced through the United States’ midfield and back line in an attack that began in earnest with Andi Sullivan getting beaten off the dribble.

A nifty pass into an open channel sent Victoria Pelova boring in, alone, on Alyssa Naeher. Rather than shoot, Pelova opted to pass, and the ball caromed off a U.S. defender and to a Dutch player, who found Jill Roord at the top of the box.

One touch, one strike into the lower corner, and the U.S. trails for the first time in a World Cup since its 2011 quarterfinal against Brazil. (The Americans lost in the final that year to Japan in penalty kicks but never trailed during open play.)