U.S.A. lost? Better change the rules

One unexpected media storyline to emerge from Sunday's Women's World Cup Final is the supposed unfairness of penalty kicks as a way to decide a winner. This is silly. Maybe penalty kicks are a fair process, maybe they aren't (I don't know or care enough about the deep structure of soccer to say). But it is conspicuous that no one said anything of the sort when the U.S. won its quarterfinal match against Brazil last Sunday on penalty kicks. And certainly no one said anything when the U.S. won the 1999 World Cup final against China the same way.

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