Chile Goalkeeper Equal to the Task, if Not to the Team

Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

PARIS — The construction of Christiane Endler’s masterpiece started days ago. Hours of work had gone into an action that would pass in the blink of an eye: all the time Chile’s goalkeeper spent studying how the United States likes to attack, identifying the types of threats she was likely to face, making sure she was forewarned, and forearmed.

She noticed — together with her coaches — that the United States, the reigning world champion, has a tendency to sling crosses into the box, seeking deft, flicked headers at the near post designed to pick out a target at the far. That was Step 1: Know your enemy.

Step 2 was to work out how to stop it: long, arduous, repetitive…