Und...das Spiel geht ins Elfmeterschießen!

Well, well, that was quite a game.

I don't follow soccer and I don't even know all that much about it, but when there's a major tournament and Germany is going nuts over it, it starts to seem worth checking out!

The Women's World Cup is taking place in Germany, but I didn't get around to watching any of it until yesterday's quarterfinal game between Germany and Japan (dead boring, not worth recapping) and today's quarterfinal between the US and Brazil (highly suspenseful!)

I actually missed the US' first goal, because it happened right in the 2nd minute of the game, before I even got there. Then it stayed 1-0, and it stayed 1-0...until some rather unfair seeming refereeing allowed Brazil to redo a penalty kick that had been blocked the first time, but now became a goal.

And it stayed 1-1, and it stayed 1-1, and the game went into overtime. In just the second minute of overtime, Brazil's renowned player Marta scored. So for the rest of the overtime, Brazil was leading, still leading...and they weren't being very sportsmanlike about it, either, with one of the players faking an injury – to kill time and keep her team in the lead – in the most blatant way any of us had ever seen.

Pretty much every spectator seemed to be mad at Brazil by this point, though I was still kind of rooting for them, since they were just clearly playing better. And Marta really started to shine, just as impressive as I'd heard.

But then. The 90-minute game had already added 30 minutes of overtime, and now we were into the final 3 minutes of overtime for the overtime. In the next to last minute, in the 122nd minute of a game that's technically only 90 minutes long, Abby Wambach of the US team scored, using her head. Soccer is insane...

With the game suddenly tied again and time up, it went to a penalty shootout, which the US won (their goalie, Hope Solo, is quite amazing). And it was all over and the US had won after all.

The German friend present commented that this fit the American "dream," the way it would be if this were a Hollywood movie: the underdog status through most of the game, with the unfair referee call and some low-handed tactics from the other team, but never giving up and then getting that decisive goal literally in the next to last minute of the game.