PALO ALTO, Calif. -- They had broken soccer's two cardinal rules: Do not score on yourself. And do not be scored on after the clock has run out. Now, the US women's team was sitting in the locker room glum, chastened, and trailing the Germans Thursday night.
''You've got 45 minutes left in your dream,'' coach Tony DiCicco told his squad. ''If you don't go back out there and give everything you have, you're going to go home early. And you're going to be sad about that.''
Their World Cup dream is supposed to end a week from today in the Rose Bowl with Uncle Sam's nieces taking a victory lap before ascending to accept their gold medals. It was not supposed to end with a loss to the Germans in the Redskins' playpen in suburban Maryland with the First Family coming by to offer condolences.
''For how many years we've played together and sweated together and killed each other in practice,'' midfielder Julie Foudy was saying, after she and her blood sisters had stayed alive with a 3-2 victory that put them into tomorrow's semifinals with Brazil at Stanford Stadium. ''And now, to have the World Cup here in the US and to be able to win it - that's the dream. That's what we all talked about at halftime. Let's not make this our last 45 minutes. Everything we've been fighting for, let's let it continue.''
So here came Brandi Chastain, who had accidentally tapped the ball into her own goal in the fifth minute, pouncing on a German mistake off a corner kick and cracking a goal off the crossbar and in. And here came supersub Shannon MacMillan dashing into the match in the 66th minute to take a corner kick and launching a lightning bolt that Joy Fawcett headed in for the winner. ''She was on the field for what, two seconds?'', DiCicco marveled.
Such is the stuff that dreams are made of. One touch - and magic. And for Chastain, one swing of the leg and redemption. She had watched in horror and humiliation as the ball she thought she was passing back to keeper Briana Scurry rolled slowly into the US goal.
''It was obviously disappointing to put a ball in your own net,'' said Chastain. ''But literally within seconds of it going in, [captain] Carla Overbeck came over and looked me straight in the eye and said, `Brandi, don't worry about it. We've got a lot of soccer yet to play. It's over. We're going to go forward and we're going to score a lot of goals.'''
Turned out three was enough, and as regulation time expired the anxious Americans kept glaring at Colombian referee Martha Toro Pardo, who had added two minutes to the clock. ''Everyone was kind of angry,'' said forward Tiffeny Milbrett. ''Where did she get those two minutes from? When you come from a goal down twice, you want it over as soon as possible.''
When Toro Pardo finally blew her whistle, the Americans hugged each other (''A big sigh of relief,'' said Milbrett), did a celebratory tour of the field, heard the President congratulate them on their heart and soul, then realized that they'd also qualified for next summer's Olympics in Sydney. ''Our reaction was - cool!,'' said Scurry. ''But we've got another game to play. First things first.''
As demanding and draining and fulfilling as the victory over the Germans was (`It could have been a final,' mused DiCicco'), it was only a quarterfinal. The Americans always survive the quarterfinals. Their difficulties on the global stage have come in the semis - they lost the Cup to Norway there last time and had to beat the Norwegians in overtime to survive at the Olympics. All Thursday's heroic 45 minutes bought them was 90 more.
