USA hellbent on revenge over Japan

Having lost out narrowly to Japan in last year's World Championship Final, the USA women's team are confident of victory today.

That penalty shoot-out loss in Germany last year still rankles within the USA team, a result that means the Japanese instead of them are bidding to become the first team to win both the World Cup and Olympic titles back-to-back. American striker Abby Wambach mirrored the thoughts of the rest of the team when she said: "I've been hoping for this final from the moment I stepped off the podium in Germany. "Every single player on this team, whether they're even here or not, even players that are left back in the United States, they've given us all an opportunity to train, to work, to dedicate, to sacrifice, every single day since the World Cup, so that we can have this one chance, the one more chance, the 90 more minutes. "All of us have dreamt about it. We've had nightmares about it even, what happened last summer. This is an opportunity for us for not even redemption, but to prove ourselves, to let whatever happened last summer go ? and be in a position to go after and take the gold medal because we believe that we've earned it. It's going to take 90 minutes of a great performance of the best team in the world, and that's going to be the team that's going to be sitting on the top podium." Despite that loss 12 months ago, the Americans are still ranked No. 1 in the world and are the two-time defending Olympic champions. They are in fact going for a fourth Olympic gold medal, having triumphed on the first occasion that women's football was included at Atlanta in 1996.