Resilient Japan ultimately only undone by moment of magic from Trinity Rodman - ESPN

Despite being huge underdogs, Japan gave it their all and — for the most part of Saturday's Olympic women's football quarterfinal against United States — looked every chance of pulling off an almighty upset.

They stifled opponents that have thus far been the dominant force in the tournament, and even created a handful of decent chances that might have seen them in the lead had they not been spurned.

Having taken the game to extra-time, it then looked as though Nadeshiko might hold out to force the lottery of penalties — which was the same manner in which they pulled off their most famous victory over the USWNT back in the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup final.

In such a tight and tense affair, it looked like it was always either going to need a moment of inspiration or a costly error if the contest was to be decided before the dreaded shootout.

As the first period of extra-time was about to end, it proved to be the former when Trinity Rodman found space down the right, expertly cut inside Hikaru Kitagawa before dispatching a sublime effort from a testing angle into the top corner for what proved to be decisive moment of a narrow 1-0 win.

When the final whistle blew 15 minutes or so later, it was easy to assume that it was sheer exhaustion that caused the Japanese players to collapse to the ground — and it certainly would have been a contributing factor.

But there can be no doubt that it was also from despair.

For most of the marathon 120 minutes that had just taken place, Japan had largely stifled an American team boasting a tournament-high nine goals in the group stage.

There was no sign of the free-flowing, expansive football that United States displayed in their three previous outings.

While some of that can be attributed