ASADENA, Calif. - They had heard it said that the final was almost irrelevant, that the larger victory had already been won. The US women's soccer team won when they filled Giants Stadium three weeks ago. They won when the president came to watch them play - twice. They won when David Letterman adopted them as his late-night mascots. They won when hundreds of notebooks and cameras chronicled them, when thousands of ''ponytailed hooligans'' screeched for their autographs.
But the Babes of Summer knew, finally, that they couldn't win without winning the World Cup, without squelching their Chinese rivals yet again, without reclaiming the golden trophy they'd lost four years ago.
So when Brandi Chastain slammed home the fifth and decisive penalty kick after 120 scoreless minutes in the Rose Bowl yesterday afternoon, the Americans got what meant most to them - the victory that affirms their legacy.
''The last five games have been for all of America to jump on our backs,'' forward Tiffeny Milbrett was saying, a cell phone at her ear and a gold medal around her neck. ''This was for us. That's why we wanted it so bad. We had come from so far and done so much. We wanted to be able to go out right.''
Wasn't this their tournament? It had certainly been promoted that way. This event was always about America and America's feelings not only about soccer but also about women. This was about gender equity and the backdrop was the Nike TV spot showing Mia Hamm and Michael Jordan facing off in their anything-you-can-do-I-can-do duel.
This was not so much a World Cup as it was an American Cup with the rest of the world invited. It was organized by Americans. It was marketed by American companies. And 95 percent of the tickets were sold to Americans.
The whole point of hosting the World Cup was to get the women's game on the radar screen here. The question in 1994, when the United States hosted the men's cup for the first time, was whether Americans would pay top dollar to watch soccer. The question this summer was whether they would pay to watch women play it.
That question was answered on the first day, when nearly 79,000 people jammed into Giants Stadium to watch the US play Denmark. When the crowds kept coming, when TV ratings kept rising (surpassing hockey's Stanley Cup), when the media hordes approached Super Bowl size, when everybody in the country knew that Joy Fawcett had two kids and Michelle Akers had chronic fatigue and Chastain had posed nude, nobody was sure what it all meant.
Was this the first swell of a societal sea change? Or merely Monet with corner kicks? Was this merely Americans infatuated with the Big Event? Or had they put women's soccer up there with Major League Baseball and the NFL and the NBA? If the US women had gone three-and-out and foreigners had been playing for the title, would anyone have cared?
No doubt, it mattered hugely that the Americans were expected to win. As soon as they won a match, tens of thousands of tickets were snapped up for their next one. ''We could have sold 120,000 seats for the final,'' organizing committee president Marla Messing said. Everybody, it seemed, wanted to be there with painted faces when their Babes of Summer finished this summer blockbuster by carrying the Cup over their heads.
The final was irrelevant - until the US got there. Then it became imperative to win it. ''We had a lot of pressure,'' said Tisha Venturini. ''So many people told us, `You're going to win. You've got to win for this to be successful.' Just to be able to say after all this that we did do that ... that's a big achievement.''
You could see the strain on the Americans' faces yesterday as the scoreless minutes ticked on. You could sense their anxiety when Akers, who'd won the Cup for them in 1991, was helped out of the match and into the locker room. You could almost hear the giant whoosh of relief when they saw ageless Kristine Lilly (''The Queen of Caps'') leap high to head out the ball that would have beaten them in overtime.
And when Chastain walked to the spot to take the final kick, you knew her teammates were aware of the dramatic irony. It was Chastain who had put her penalty kick off the crossbar when the US lost by a goal to the Chinese in Portugal in March. It was Chastain who kicked the ball into her own net against the Germans. Now, it was Chastain who brought them to glory, then ripped off her jersey and fell to her knees in delight and thanks.
This was a Hollywood finish to a made-in-America story. ''People will keep this in their memory a long time,'' Chastain said. ''The lasting impression will be that 20 people on the field gave their all. Not only for themselves, but for their country.''
