“Usually when there are 30 pictures within the recreation, it’s the USA with about 25 of ’em. Not right this moment!”
It wasn’t simply the ESPN commentator who was shocked.
Heather O’Reilly had scored the sport’s closing purpose, dragging world quantity ones and two-time champions United States to a 2-2 draw of their opening match on the 2007 Girls’s World Cup.
O’Reilly wasn’t stunned by the scoreline although. Or how evenly-fought the sport was. She knew it will be powerful.
As a substitute, as the ultimate whistle blew, it was the angle of the US’s opponents, who noticed an opportunity missed, reasonably than some extent gained, that struck her.
“I keep in mind North Korea seeming disillusioned,” says O’Reilly.
“Their physique language appeared to say ‘oh my gosh, we had been so near taking down the large’.”
North Korea is the world’s most remoted nation, a state based mostly across the infallibility of Supreme Chief Kim Jong-un and a deep suspicion of the surface world.
But, regardless of residing requirements being effectively behind most different nations, North Korea has been one of many strongest feminine soccer nations on the planet.
Once they took on the USA in 2007, they had been ranked fifth on the earth and amid a run of three Asian titles within the house of a decade.
Their document at youth degree is even higher. In 2016, they received the U20 Girls’s World Cup, defeating Spain, the USA and France within the knockout rounds. That very same yr, their under-17 crew additionally lifted their age-grade World Cup.
“The sport in 2007 was difficult, actually tremendous arduous,” remembers O’Reilly of her assembly with North Korea’s senior facet. “It was arduous to get the ball off them, they had been buzzing round, very fast.”
There was one other problem although, one which was distinctive to North Korea.
“It was simply such a cloud of uncertainty,” says O’Reilly. “The movie we had on them was very restricted, even by the usual of the instances.
“Each time we performed North Korea, it was at all times a thriller.”
The thriller now could be, after a doping controversy and a four-year absence from worldwide soccer, can North Korea’s ladies be a power as soon as once more?
