By Gil LeBreton
glebreton@star-telegram.com
LONDON -- Their postgame T-shirts read, "Greatness has been found."
And none too soon for the U.S. women's soccer team, I might add.
Carli Lloyd proved her coach wrong.
Abby Wambach screamed in her teammates' ears -- "Who wants it more? This is about heart. Don't let them back in this game!"
And Hope Solo rediscovered her considerable greatness by having perhaps the best goalkeeping night the women's game has ever seen.
It all spelled greatness, give or take a T-shirt swoosh, Thursday night at Wembley Stadium.
With Lloyd scoring both U.S. goals and Solo ranging high and wide to stop just about everything Japan threw at her, the American women won their third consecutive Olympic gold medal, 2-1.
And then they danced. They hugged. And they cried, as if a mighty cross had been lifted from their backs.
"They snatched our dream last summer," midfielder Megan Rapinoe said of last year's World Cup loss to Japan.
"This kind of feels, then, like the nightmare has been turned back around."
In the weeks before the London Olympics, U.S. coach Pia Sundhage made the decision to bench Lloyd, an eight-year veteran of the national team, in favor of younger, quicker Lauren Cheney.
But injuries -- first to Shannon Boxx and then to Cheney -- put Lloyd back in her customary central midfield position for the gold medal game.
"In a player's career, you just don't know how many Olympic opportunities you're going to get," Lloyd reflected Thursday night.
Her first goal came only eight minutes into the match, when she headed in a centering pass from Alex Morgan that was probably intended more for Wambach than for her.
"I saw Alex and I just ran to the ball," Lloyd said.
Stunned by the early goal, the Japanese team turned on the pressure, dominating the first-half possession time and blanketing the U.S. attack down the sides.
In the half's 17th and 18th minutes, Solo responded spectacularly to back-to-back Japan challenges, one of them a point-blank bullet that she deflected over the crossbar.
Somehow, the U.S. team, thanks mostly to Solo, made it to intermission with its 1-0 lead intact.
The failure to capitalize ended up costing the reigning World Cup champs dearly.
In the 54th minute, Lloyd scored again, ending a run down the middle with a 20-yard drive past diving goalkeeper Miho Fukumoto.
A telling excerpt from the record book instantly emerged. The U.S. team had won its last 138 games when leading a match 2-0.
"I was on a mission this Olympics to prove everybody wrong," Lloyd said later. "I think I showed everybody tonight that I belong on the field."
Sundhage seemed to happily agree.
"She's proven that I was wrong," the U.S. coach said. "I'm really happy that she's more clever than I am."
In the 63rd minute, U.S. defenders couldn't clear the ball out of the goal area, and Japan's Yuki Ogimi took advantage of Solo being sprawled on the ground. The Americans' lead was cut in half, 2-1.
But Wambach, whose pilot light never seems to dim, refused to let the advantage slip away.
"I kept pounding my chest, saying, 'Every player on the field is tired. This is about who wants it more -- right here, right now,'" Wambach said.
"We fought. We dug deep. I kept screaming, 'Don't let them back into this game!'"
Solo's best -- and certainly most important -- save of the match came in the final 10 minutes. Japan's Mana Iwabuchi stole the ball and suddenly found herself with an open look at the net.
But Solo thwarted the shot with a memorable diving stop.
"Hope Solo is the best goalkeeper in the world," Wambach declared later.
"She probably saved the day for us, literally, five times."
For Solo, the wakeup call to greatness couldn't have come at a better time.
Early in the Olympics, Solo's attitude had been the subject of a coaches-and-captains-only meeting. Against Canada in the semifinals Tuesday, Solo had allowed one player to score three goals.
"She took that personally," Wambach said, "and I think she wanted to make the difference tonight."
When asked about her controversial goalkeeper, Sundhage said, "Hope Solo says a lot on Twitter, I guess. What matters, though, is what kind of player she is and her performance.
"Hope Solo had a very good game. She brought gold back to the United States of America."
In the end, it was all about heart, just as the chest-pounding Wambach had said. It was about avenging a World Cup defeat that, according to Wambach, had haunted them for months.
Greatness, however, was found on the famous pitch at Wembley on Thursday night.
Let the crying, hugging and T-shirt-wearing begin.
Gil LeBreton, 817-390-7697Twitter: @gilebreton
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