England were in a World Cup Semi Final last night, so considering we knew exactly what was going to happen, there was a remarkable amount of drama in Lyon as the USA made it through to their third consecutive World Cup final.
A massive worldwide audience tuned in what was probably the most anticipated women's game of all time. The bad blood between the teams, and their country's respective media organisations, as well as the Megan Rapinoe Vs. Donald Trump subplot made sure there was already enough drama to go around, even before kick off.
When Rapinoe was left out of the US team, the drama piqued again. (It turns out she had a pretty boring hamstring injury, and conspiracies were put to bed.)
Then when it all started, we were treated to a three goal first half, with the USA leading 2-1, and a second half that included two VAR stoppages. The first was a very late offside call on Ellen White after the whole world thought she had equalised. Secondly, the referee awarded White a very controversial penalty after a long VAR stoppage. Steph Houghton proceeded to take one of the worst penalties ever seen, and it was all over for England.
This was about as good as it gets for a World Cup, a game that had everything. Unfortunately, on social media and on more traditional media, the "takes" were incoming, and all of us were a little bit dumber as a result.
First up, as usual, was Piers Morgan. It may be a desperate attempt to stay relevant, but his jumping on the back of Donald Trump's enemy du jour seems to be working for him, so Rapinoe was always likely to feel his Twitter wrath in the last week. Last night though, he decided all of the "yanks" were in his path. Firstly accusing Alex Morgan's harmless "sipping tea" celebration, of actually depicting smoking "Dope", he quickly went into full meltdown mode, as is broken down here.
Dope, not tea. pic.twitter.com/vW9Q1UxPDg
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 2, 2019
Bizarrely, Morgan wasn't the only one who had a problem with Morgan's harmless celebration. Doing punditry for beIN Sports, former England international Lianne Sanderson said the celebration was "distasteful", for some reason.
☕ @liannesanderson calls Alex Morgan's tea sipping celebration "distasteful."
📺 Live now on HD11#beINWWC #beINSPIRED19 #ENGUSA #FIFAWWC pic.twitter.com/dwvowkcdK6— beIN SPORTS (@beINSPORTS_EN) July 2, 2019
Naturally, Twitter.com wasn't long in taking this a new level of silliness and fury.
The best take on the tea-drinking celebration and, also, the greatest tweet ever written pic.twitter.com/mFdiXkW0Io
— Adam Hurrey (@FootballCliches) July 2, 2019
We're not exactly sure how one would depict eating a curry as part of a goal celebration, but we're all ears.
VAR also drew its usual anger during the game from English fans and media. As always with the penalty decisions, there is a genuine conversation as to how much is too much in terms of how forensic we need to get about subjective decisions? Surely on binary matter like offside though, there is no issue? Especially given the anger from English managers, players, media, and supporters when Cameroon reacted poorly to the exact same decision? Right?
Half a boot offside. God bless VAR eh? I can't count the times before VAR when we all used to say "but half his boot was offside anyone could see that". This fucking forensic nonsense is unwarranted, stupid and a bores charter. Killing matches. #ENGUSA
— Danny Baker (@prodnose) July 2, 2019
This may all feel very anti-English, but let's face it, there was two sides at it.
The harmless tea celebration was admittedly a lot more annoying once the Americans got at it.
Just another tea party... 🇺🇸☕ pic.twitter.com/pdFQlEohFW
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 2, 2019
No. 13 on her birthday. In honor of those 13 colonies.
That’s. The. Tea 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Go on, @alexmorgan13, what a birthday! pic.twitter.com/Rge0HMMrCk— U.S. Soccer WNT (@USWNT) July 2, 2019
Fox Sports also had a video ready to go on the full time whistle, one that might just have been the cringiest video on the internet last night.
We're sorry, England. 🇺🇸😂 pic.twitter.com/hhu0yWLhz8
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 2, 2019
As always, a lot of the worst American takes came from them not really understanding football all that well, as evidenced last night by the reaction to Alyssa Naeher's save to possibly the worst penalty ever taken.
USWNT storms back to the World Cup final thanks to Alyssa Naeher's heroic save: https://t.co/tLqClDwAsy pic.twitter.com/XiW7BB4yy5
— Deadspin (@Deadspin) July 2, 2019
What say you now, all you Alyssa Naeher haters? https://t.co/q7x0djgI59
— Nancy Armour (@nrarmour) July 3, 2019
We look forward to similarly good football and terrible analysis and arguing when the USA face either the Netherlands or Sweden in Sunday's final.
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