the olympic group stage was hectic, brutal and chatoic, let's remember some good times

The Olympic tournament is brutal. Several of the best teams and players in the world are squished into a rapid fire miniature tournament, making not just wins and losses feel massive, but every goal as well. In the end most people will only remember the gold medalists, such is the nature of winning and attention spans.

While it is true that the truncated schedule isn’t conducive to player safety or common sense—particularly with the IOC insistent on nonsensically sized squads—the tournament itself is iconic. It’s like throwing the World Cup into a pressure cooker, and that’s fun. So we’re going to rewind to the group stage, where every team was on even ground and needing a spark, or a moment, to believe. Each got one, let’s review.

Australia | A comeback to top all comebacks

Australia did not have a good tournament and unfortunately put in some of the worst team performances in the stage. But if there was a moment where we saw the real Australia, where the sparkle and good vibes were back and effective, it was this.

Barbra Banda’s first half hat trick and Racheal Kundananji absolutely tore the Aussie defense apart, and put Zambia up 5-2 in the 56th minute. An own goal, a penalty and two strikes, including the match winner hitting the back of the net in the 90th minute, rescued the match for Australia and gave them their only points of the tournament.

(The IOC are annoying about media rights to the point where YouTube embeds aren’t even allowed. But I highly recommend watching the full match highlights. It was drugs, but the good kind with no side effects except potentially becoming obsessed with women’s soccer. I’m no doctor, but I’d hardly call that a bad thing.)

Brazil | Marta Assist + Gabi Nunes banger

Marta is still out here doin it and we are so blessed. It’s worth watching more angles of this, especially wider ones. Marta’s violent twist to hit the reverse pass was the kind of clever blend of creativity and technique that’s made her the GOAT. At 38-years-old, she still has every ounce of the sauce that’s made young players across the globe look up to her.

In this instance, she simply refused to even send a whiff of her intention before the final moment. She spotted Gabi Nunes’s run, and knew even a glance her way would put the opportunity at risk. So she waits, and baits, and waits some more. Drawing the defense in before twisting to chip the pass into the gap. The pass gets Nunes behind the line and she honors it by ripping a shot in off the underside of the bar—one of the most pleasing ways to score a goal.

Canada | We don’t need no stinkin’ drones

Canada coaching has a lot of explaining to do, and a lot of shame to absorb. A massive drone scandal was uncovered prior to their first match of the tournament, spanning both senior national teams and reportedly dating back to at least 2017. Canada and head coach Bev Priestman (who curiously used the ill-gotten advantage to play dire football) tried to get ahead of punishments with a self-imposed suspension, before FIFA yeeted her from the tournament with a one-year suspension effective immediately. They also hit the team at the tournament with a six-point deduction.

All this put the players in a precarious situation. Not only was their tournament completely derailed, with the country becoming the source of investigations, ire and jokes, but players’s accomplishments were questioned too. The team set out to prove they didn’t need no stinkin’ drones. They did it, courtesy of a 90+12 strike from center back Vanessa Gilles to give them an emotional win that halved the point reduction.

Colombia | Marcela Restrepo’s immaculate volley

Colombia’s tournament began by giving up three goals in the first half to France. They eventually scrapped two back, one courtesy of a pk, but ended the match with no points, a red card for Mayra Ramirez, and a lot to do.

The next match was against New Zealand, which on paper would be their easiest match. After a very poor start to the tournament and a nervy start to their second match, Marcela Restrepo decided she’d had enough and caught a headed clearance FLUSH. This is a dream strike. Every kid everywhere has practiced sweetly lashing a volleyed shot into a corner but Restrepo actually did it, and at a time her team needed it most.

France | Katoto putting the damn team on her back

One of the best strikers in the world, Marie-Antoinette Katoto, is back. No seriously, like back. Super back. As in she scored five of France’s six goals in the group stage. That is a sign of an unbelievable level of back. Uncharted territories of back. A new, bold frontier of back.

Germany | This sweet ass ball movement for Jule Brand’s goal

Germany have been super strugglin recently, and the 4-1 L to the USWNT was a tough look. But they rebounded by taking out their frustrations on Zambia to a duplicate scoreline in their favor. The main thing for Germany was to figure out who their next stars will be, and who they will be able to rely on. Every player with those duties in attack helped craft one of the sweetest moves of the tournament.

Striker Lea Schüller won an aerial dual in midfield and flicked the ball to Klara Bühl, who made a run into space behind the back of a chasing defender. She received the ball again and drove centrally, sucking in the two center backs and creating space for Sarai Linder on the left and Jule Brand on the right. Her layoff was perfect, and Linder hit a delicious curling ball along the ground to Brand for a lovely, sweeping goal that was a signal of what the new generation could produce.

Japan | Thirty-yard stoppage time match winner

Japan weren’t able to replicate their 4-0 win over Spain at the World Cup, losing 1-2, which meant there was some pressure on to pickup max points in their second match. Brazil scored the first goal in the 56th minute, and things weren’t looking too great for Japan. Then came eight minutes of second half stoppage time.

Saki Kumagai saved a point when she converted a penalty kick at 90+2, which was a relief given how the game had gone, but Momoko Tanikawa wasn’t satisfied. So she secured all three points with a 96th minute first-time thirty yard lob of the keeper. You read that right. It’d be hard to fill someone with more audacity than Momoko had at this moment. It wasn’t even a pass from a teammate, it was an errant pass that only missed by inches, which at the time only seemed annoying to Brazil. Then Tanikawa punished it with zero remorse and unleashed an aesthetically perfect curling shot over the keeper’s head and dive bombing into the net. A brutal way to lose, but an immaculate way to win.

New Zealand | Guess you didn’t get all the footage

Canada’s own spygate started off as just a weird thing, then got more serious by the end of the day. A couple days before kickoff we got word that New Zealand reported a drone potentially recording their practices. We found out later that it was their second report, and that French police had arrested the operator (I know they’re technically called pilots but lol no) and the drone.

Footage recovered revealed to definitely be of New Zealand’s practices—and yet New Zealand scored first. In the thirteenth minute. On a set piece. Hilarious. Amazing. Perfect.

Nigeria | Onyi Echegini’s emerging as the menace she was at FSU

All three group stage games from Nigeria unfortunately all looked and felt the same. They start well, defend well and create chances. Then they don’t score, the opposition does, and they lose. It was frustrating, and it might be time for a new coach. However, one positive was Onyi Echegini growing more comfortable, and more prominent, on the national team.

She’s a dynamic central player who is a different type of threat to goal than the rest of Nigeria’s very talented attackers. Echegini’s passing and movement helped carve up Japan’s defense, which she capped off with a sweet strike to get Nigeria their only goal of the tournament. A team this talented should be scoring more, and hopefully that’s to come. When they do, they’ll pose a lot of problems to a lot of defenses, of which Echegini will certainly be one.

Spain | Alexia Putellas is backity back back back

Alexia Putellas return from an ACL tear took some time, and when she came back she—quite understandably—wasn’t herself. That’s not surprising, at her peak she was an unquestioned best in the world and two-time Ballon d’Or winner. Getting back to that, for anybody and even without injury, is a big ask. But uh, she might be there now.

Putellas hit two bangers as reminders of who she is and what she can do, and this sweet left footed strike which curled the ball through the sky toward the inside of the far post is truly outrageous. Audacity and technique on a hundred thousand million. One of the most fun things about Putellas at her peak is how casually she did outright outrageous things. This strike was chillingly familiar.

USWNT | The Trin Spin™ makes its Olympic debut

It’s been fun to see Rodman develop a go-to move, which has been dubbed The Trin Spin™. She told Sam Mewis in an interview for The Women’s Game that she sometimes gets teased for doing the same move, but claimed “it works.” She’s never been more right. And in true Rodman fashion, she’s extremely not keen on ever becoming predictable, so she’s finding a variety of ways to setup and deploy this maneuver. This goal marked a completely new use of the maneuver.

Usually we see her along the touchline using the move to nutmeg defenders and spin out of trouble. This time she latched onto a pass in the box and spun the ball and herself in between and out of the way of two defenders. It left the keeper isolated, and Rodman used the shock of the move to calmly roll the ball beneath the keeper and into the net. An absurd move and an absurd goal from a player who’s been absurd since her first minutes as a professional footballer.

Zambia | Carved fault lines through Australia’s defense

It is my sincere hope that one day protecting women, especially Black women, and especially Black African women, will be a thing institutions like FIFA stop dragging their feet on. Their head coach Bruce Mwape was initially denied entry into France due to his multiple allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct (of players and a FIFA contractor at the World Cup). Instead of getting rid of him, like they did with Canada coach Bev Priestman, he was essentially assigned a babysitter and can’t meet with any of the players one-on-one. He also reportedly took a taxi alone to one of the stadiums on a matchday.

If these are the lengths he has to go through to avoid abusing players or inappropriately touching someone, maybe, perhaps, just maybe he shouldn’t be their head coach.

Also, turns out, he’s not a very good coach. Zambia have genuine world star elite talent in attack, a bit of a dropoff in midfield but still talented, particularly with Grace Chanda back. But defensively they are poor. Defensive structure, recognition and organization has a lot to do with the coach. Even things like managing the game state is important, especially then your superstar attacking talent gives you multiple goals to protect.

I feel for Zambia’s players. They don’t deserve the heartache of poor performances and having to cope with a coach who really shouldn’t be there. It’s a lot. Still, they put on one of the best attacking performances all Olympics, by absolutely wrecking Australia’s backline.

The Aussies were nervous and petrified that there would be a goal every time Zambia got into their defensive third. It was the sort of overwhelming performance we know Zambia are capable of but don’t see nearly enough, and which unfortunately also doesn’t lead to enough results.

Still, what they did in this match shouldn’t be overlooked. Australia came back to win and that is painful, but the quality of this team is such that they can and should terrify everyone they play against. If they had the coach they deserved, this would have been a win. From there, who knows how far they could have gone with three points, confidence, and competence at the head coaching position.