On Saturday, the United States women’s national soccer team will face Brazil in the final of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, where they will attempt to win their first Olympic gold medal since 2012.
It did not always seem inevitable that the Americans would reach this point.
With a revamped roster and a new coach, Emma Hayes, who just began her third month on the job, the USWNT advanced through the group stage, winning their first three games by an aggregate score of 9-2.
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However, in the quarter-final and semi-final victories, these differences were significantly smaller. In both cases, a late goal from the Americans ended the scoreless, often frustrating stalemates, with Trinity Rodman and Sophia Smith scoring the decisive goals to put Japan and Germany in the lead, respectively.
Exactly how late were the goals scored? They both came after the end of regular time, meaning 1-0 wins and avoiding a potential penalty shootout.
As the USWNT prepares for their match this weekend against Brazil, another game where the winner may not be decided until the final minutes, here’s what you need to know about overtime in soccer, how it works and more:
What is extra time in football?
Extra time in football is basically what is called overtime in the NFL or NBA. If a game is tied at the end of regulation time, which in professional football is 90 minutes, it is extended into two 15-minute periods.
In the victories against Japan and Germany, the USWNT scored goals in the first half of overtime.
It is used in the knockout stages of club and international tournaments to determine the winner. In leagues around the world and in the group stages of international tournaments such as the Olympic Games and World Cup, a match is simply declared a draw if it is tied at the end of regular time.
If the score is still tied after 30 minutes of overtime, the game will be decided by a penalty shootout.
OLYMPIC GAMES 2024 IN PARIS: Meet the members of the US team competing at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris
How do penalty shootouts work in football?
Penalty shootouts are one of the most stressful and draining situations a player, a team and their legions of fans can face.
Each team selects five players to take a penalty kick 12 feet from the goal line. Teams take turns taking the penalty kicks until each team has gone through its five players. The team with the most goals wins. If it’s still tied, it goes to sudden death, with teams taking turns taking the penalty kicks until one scores and the other misses.
In a penalty shootout, not all five attempts are always taken. For example, if a team scores on their first four shots and the opponent misses on two of their first four shots, the game is over.
What is a golden goal in football?
Golden Goal is a sudden-death variation of extra time in which the game ends when a team scores a goal in extra time, rather than allowing the full 30 minutes to pass.
The concept was introduced by FIFA in 1993 for certain international tournaments and has been used in several notable cases. In the finals of the 1996 and 2000 UEFA European Championships, a golden goal decided the winner. Oliver Bierhoff scored for Germany in 1996 and David Trezeguet for France in 2000.
Although the golden goal provided a dramatic conclusion to exciting, hard-fought games, it largely disappeared from professional soccer after 2003. In the USWNT’s two overtime victories at the 2024 Paris Olympics, play continued after goals by Rodman and Smith.
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What is injury time in football?
Virtually every professional or international football match features another form of extra time – injury time.
Unlike major American sports such as the NFL and NBA, where the clock counts down in each period and is stopped when play is interrupted, soccer has a clock that continues to count down each half and is not stopped in the event of game delays such as substitutions, injuries, goals, time-wasting or, more recently, video reviews.
Rather, the time for these various stoppages during the game is added together by a referee and added at the end of each half in regulation time and at the end of each period in overtime. This extra playing time is called stoppage time, but is sometimes referred to as injury time.
Although it’s often just a few minutes – particularly at the end of the first half before many teams bring substitutes into play – those seconds spent on substitutions, goals and injuries can sometimes add up to a significant amount of extra playing time. Brazil’s 4-2 semi-final win over Spain on Tuesday featured 15 minutes of stoppage time at the end of the second half.
Watch the 2024 Paris Olympics on Peacock
What channel will broadcast the USWNT gold medal game at the 2024 Paris Olympics?
The USWNT’s match against Brazil in a gold medal quest at the 2024 Paris Olympics will be broadcast on USA Network, with Spanish-language coverage available on Telemundo. Streaming options for the game include NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Olympics app, Peacock and Fubo, with the latter offering a free trial to prospective subscribers.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Paris 2024 Olympics: What is extra time in soccer? How injury time and penalty shootouts work
