Two years ago in Paris, just one point separated the USA from France in the Olympic final. 67-66. Tonight at 8:00 p.m. at the Berlin Arena, the two teams meet again with a world title on the line, and the question is whether France has closed that minimal gap or if that game was the ceiling of what they can achieve.
A dominance that has become routine
To understand what's at stake for the USA, it helps to look at one date: 2006. That's the last time a Women's World Championship was decided without them at the top. Since then, they've won four consecutive titles, and tonight they're going for a fifth, which would be their twelfth in history.
That dominance has been so prolonged that it's stopped being read as an achievement and has become an expectation. Winning adds nothing to their legacy; losing would be the story.
France, seventy-three years later
On the other side is a team for which reaching this point is already extraordinary. France has only played in one World Cup final in its entire history, and that was in the first edition of the tournament, held in Chile in 1953. Seventy-three years have passed and several entire generations without the French returning to this stage.
What has brought them here, however, is not a fluke. It's a project that has been competing at the elite level for years and that in Paris came within one possession of toppling the giant.
What's decided tonight
There's more at stake than the trophy. This week there's been debate about who should occupy the top spot in the world rankings, a discussion that's usually settled with office arguments and that today has a much cleaner resolution: forty minutes in Berlin.