Chile Goalkeeper Equal to the Task, if Not to the Team

The United States threw everything it had at Christiane Endler. She was prepared to stop almost all of it.

PARIS — The construction of Christiane Endler’s masterpiece started days ago. Hours of work had gone into an action that would pass in the blink of an eye: all the time Chile’s goalkeeper spent studying how the United States likes to attack, identifying the types of threats she was likely to face, making sure she was forewarned, and forearmed.

She noticed — together with her coaches — that the United States, the reigning world champion, has a tendency to sling crosses into the box, seeking deft, flicked headers at the near post designed to pick out a target at the far. That was Step 1: Know your enemy.

Step 2 was to work out how to stop it: long, arduous, repetitive sessions on Chile’s training field just outside Paris, in which Endler honed how to move her feet quickly enough that she could get back across her goal, watching the ball as it bounced from one head to the next, how to time her leap when the attempt to breach her defenses finally comes.

Greatness has its roots, ultimately, in groundwork. Endler was ready, then, when — midway through the second half of Chile’s Women’s World Cup match on Sunday — Mallory Pugh looked up from her post on the right wing. The United States was three goals ahead by then; the game had long been over, if it had ever even started.