They're finally where everybody had assumed they'd be before they ever started. In the sold-out Rose Bowl, in the World Cup final. All the US women's soccer team ever had to do was go through the annoying formality of actually getting there.
If you watched the Nike ads and the TV promos, the road to Pasadena (have we had enough of that phrase?) seemed like a Babes of Summer victory tour, all high-fiving and ball-signing and a few kick-arounds with obliging Nigerians and Koreans. If only ...
Once they'd held off the Brazilians on Sunday by the length of Briana Scurry's outstretched fingers, the Americans walked off smiling but drained, gave a few war whoops in their dressing room - and collapsed on the floor.
''Every game has been physically and emotionally taxing,'' captain Carla Overbeck was saying. ''We've been playing in front of the best fans in the world against the best teams in the world. There's a sense of accomplishment and relief when every game is over.''
For Overbeck and her band of ''Watch Me Play'' role models, this tournament has been going on for months. It began in March, with a wave-the-flag exhibition tour that dragged them from Los Angeles to Hershey, Pa., to the Meadowlands to Charlotte to Atlanta to Milwaukee to Chicago to Orlando to Portland, Ore.
This team, which has been together so long that its members can identify each other in the dark, didn't need anywhere near that many tuneups and certainly not in that many cities. But that was never the point anyway. The point was to get the hosts seen by as many ''ponytailed hooligans'' and their parents as possible and to lay the groundwork for the L-word: legacy.
Soccer people will tell you that whether the US actually wins the World Cup is almost irrelevant in the long run. This team has already done everything else asked of it. It packed NFL stadiums at top-dollar prices. It got more than respectable TV ratings. It was terrific with the media (what other athletes ever thanked journalists for talking to them?). It was wonderful to its fans, signing everything thrust under a pen. It modeled any role you wanted - soccer mom, sex symbol, medical miracle, black-woman-in-white-sport.
Somewhere through all that, folks seemed to forget that the home team was also supposed to get to the final - and win. ''That's an awesome enough task,'' coach Tony DiCicco was saying. ''That's one reason why this team sometimes played a bit nervous. Getting here was no easy chore.''
The men never had to do that five years ago. All they needed to do was make it to the second round. They weren't expected to inspire a generation of young boys. They didn't have to lay the groundwork for a national pro league (that was already going to happen). They had no Road to Pasadena tour. They didn't have to walk along a five-deep rope after practice scribbling their names and numbers in 90-degree heat.
Neither did the Chinese women. Not that they got fast-laned to Pasadena, either. They spent seven weeks away from home this spring. They crossed the country four times in 12 days living on McFood. They had to play the defending champions in ungodly steam heat in a half-empty stadium. But all the Chinese have had to do is play.
For the US women, the playing seemed to be just one more thing on a To Do list that got longer, not shorter, as the Cup went on. ''I'm just thankful that it's this team playing this tournament,'' Mia Hamm was saying. Because a less experienced team might have blown apart.
For the Hamms and Overbecks and Akerses and Lillys and Fawcetts and Foudys, this is the third time around. They have won the Cup. They have lost the Cup. They have won an Olympic gold medal in a full stadium at home. And they had played the contenders often enough to know that there was no locker room reserved for them at the Rose Bowl.
''We've known from Day One that it wasn't going to be easy, and it hasn't been easy,'' Hamm said. ''The Germany game stretched us. The Brazil game stretched us.''
Nobody has stretched the Chinese, who played the most impressive match in Cup history when they destroyed the Norwegians. They were equal to the Americans when they played them twice in April, and right now, they are better. They haven't given up early goals. They haven't scored on themselves. They haven't needed one-handed saves from their keeper. ''We will have to be a better team on Saturday than we were today,'' DiCicco conceded, after his team had edged the Brazilians.
And yet, that may be the easy part for this multi-tasked bunch. They're finally where they're supposed to be. All they have to do (how simple!) is play.
