The greatest knockout match in major-tournament football since 1982

The Americans – who have never failed to reach the final of the Olympic Games – duly kept their record intact. But only after coming from behind three times. Canada’s indomitable Christine Sinclair helped herself to a hat-trick – one of the great individual performances of this Games in any discipline – but still found herself on the losing side. This was mainly down to the relentless rampaging of Megan Rapinoe, and a last-nanosecond winner by Alex Morgan, but a wee bit can be attributed to the Norwegian referee Christiana Pedersen, who spent the last few minutes of normal time juggling custard pies while furiously pedalling a miniature trike with square wheels, an act she’s clearly lifted wholesale from popular working men’s club entertainer Howard Webb.