The US Women's National Team had an unorthodox problem on its, er, feet this week.In their first game of the 2023 SheBelieves Cup — and through a good chunk of their second contest as well — the Stars and Stripes played with soccer balls that refused to stay inflated. On at least four separate occasions during their matchups against Canada in Orlando and — three days later — against Japan in Nashville, the reigning World Cup champions faced stoppages to replace game balls that had gone flat.The players and coaches, unsurprisingly, were perplexed. So too were the fans, scores of whom were quick to blame Nike for producing flawed equipment.
But perhaps most shocked of all were the referees tasked with inflating the balls ahead of kickoff. Surely they hadn't blundered twice — in two different states — on a detail so minute yet so crucial.
Oh, they had. Well, sort of.Midway through the USWNT's game against Japan on Sunday, a representative for the US Soccer Federation told members of the press that referees had been using a "faulty gauge" to measure the pressure of the game balls. Fortunately, the officials had managed to find a second gauge that was working just fine, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Jonathan Tannenwald reported. Deflategate 2.0 ceased to be an issue from that point on in the match. But referees will almost certainly check their gauges a little more closely going forward.