A good friend described it to me: “If you are a player, you’re supposed to score but if you’re a goalkeeper, you’re not supposed to block a penalty.”

Minutes before halftime during the US Women’s Soccer Team’s first appearance, a penalty kick was called. For some reason, in the bar surrounded by proud jerseys and confident scarves, the moment did not feel like a penalty.

Interestingly, it felt, obvious.

Kicking it, Alex Morgan, who is one of the most decorated soccer players (men and women) in the history of the sport, had not missed a penalty since 2021.

Confronting her, Tran Thi Kim Thanh, who as a kid struggled to practice because her dad didn’t let her pursue her goals, had not blocked any penalties in a World Cup because, well, this was her first-ever appearance.

Morgan lined up, looked at the goal, and shot. The ball traveled low and straight down the middle, like a puppy excited to be pet by its owner.

Thanh got down and prevented the ball from crossing the line. Dramatically, she watched the ball bounce back to Morgan before successfully being kicked out of bounds by her defenders.

The ball disappeared into the stands but the moment, like a marble masterpiece, lived forever.

The beautiful and invigorating reaction by Thanh and her defenders might not go into the international soccer archives or any memorabilia, but it will perpetually stay as a reminder of the cruelty and ecstasy behind expectations in sports.

When Alex Morgan’s stepped on the line ready to kick, it was not her left foot that was about to perform. It was her 121 international goals, 4 World Championships, 4 Gold Medals, and Time’s 100 Most Influential People designation that were supposed to execute.

At the bar, the atmosphere was made of particles of obviousness created by repetitive success that undermine the complexity behind it.   

Morgan looked distraught not only because that specific play assumes a 76% rate of success, but because of the unpleasant reminder that certainty is just an illusion. Her face expressed missing a shot not for technical inaccuracies but for wanting to grasp the future when it does not exist.

Meanwhile, Thanh and her teammates jumped for joy and the country’s fans in the stadium celebrated as if their team had scored. They felt the opposite spectrum of a result, the stirring emotion of achieving something unexpected.

In Vietnam, even though they lost the game, all bars felt different.

It is at the revival of this moment where US players, and maybe us, have an opportunity to learn.

Expectations are not synonyms to standards.

Expectations are a subtle and slightly arrogant mirage of control. In their most natural form, they are predictions of the future. The problem is not with its creation but with its continuous belief that removes the importance of the process.

Setting competitive expectations is a productive thing, solely looking at them could be destructive.

The US Team has been ranked #1 for a total of 13 years, currently since June 2017. There is no other team remotely close. Those are 4,745 days of “obviousness” particles.

The team must win the tournament.

The issue is that all those achievements live in the past and if the team doesn’t concentrate on the present moment, on today’s breathing, the risk of stress and anxiety could become their biggest rival.

The smile on Thanh’s face must remind Morgan and her teammates how to enjoy every goal scored, every game won. The jubilation of Vietnam’s defenders must serve as a mirror to look back at the times when they were young, unpopular, and pure.

Standards in sports, when confused with required expectations, live in athletes’ minds like viruses in computers. It is not until they’re taking over the system that you recognize them.

No, the US Soccer Team doesn’t HAVE to win the tournament to succeed. They’ve already done for the sport what Sumerians did to Mathematics. With their innocent attitude and relentless effort, they have elevated it to levels that were unthinkable two decades ago.

Now it’s time to deliver another important lesson.

This game, the most popular in the world, finds its highest professionalism in the kids’ joy and not in the millions it creates.

And when delivered, maybe then, the US Soccer team will win the tournament.