USA soccer advances, and 17-year-old Alaskan wins swimming gold

TOKYO — The highest-scoring team in women’s soccer history was told to play defense Tuesday. The high-stakes gamblers were suddenly as conservative as a redstate politician.

For a U.S. team that has regularly risen to the occasion in international championships, Tuesday’s scoreless tie with Australia must has been as difficult to play as it was to watch.

But for coach Vlatko Andonovski, managing in a major tournament for the first time in his career, a draw was all the U.S. needed to get through to the knockout round of the Tokyo Olympics tournament. And seeing no need to get greedy, that’s what he played for, backing his team into Friday’s quarterfinals in Yokohama against the Netherlands in what will be a rematch of the last Women’s World Cup final.

But just because Andonovski’s plan worked doesn’t mean it was successful. In the postgame news conference, as the coach praised his team for executing his unorthodox strategy, forward Alex Morgan, sitting beside him, smirked.

“We came with the mindset that the first goal was to win the game,” Andonovski said. “And the second goal was to put in a good professional performance and not get scored on. Obviously we didn’t accomplish the first goal, but we did accomplish the second one, which was very important because ultimately it put us in the same place.”

Maybe. But playing for a tie was out of character for a team that hadn’t lost in Andonovski’s first 23 games as coach but has won just once in three games since arriving in Japan.

It was out of character for a team that had been averaging nearly 3 1/2 goals a game this year and hadn’t been shut out in more than four years but has been held scoreless twice in three games since getting to Tokyo.