Watch Netherlands vs. Japan Live Online

Watch Netherlands vs. Japan Live Online.Amy Bass, a professor of history at the College of New Rochelle, has written widely on the cultural history of sports, including the book "Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete." As the supervisor of NBC's Olympic Research Room, she is a veteran of eight Olympics, with an Emmy win in 2012. Follow her on Twitter @bassab1. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. (CNN)About a year ago, the U.S. men's national team faced Belgium in the knockout round of the World Cup. It lost 2-1 but won over 20 million viewers, making it the second most-watched men's soccer game in U.S. television history. The first? The draw the U.S. took against Portugal, which had taken place only a week or so earlier during the group round: 24.6 million viewers on that Sunday evening. American apathy toward soccer, it seemed, was over. Monday night, at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, Alberta, the U.S. women's national team will face Colombia, a nation that -- at least as far as the men's game goes -- lives and breathes soccer. And while its women's team may still be trying to find its footing in international play, just ask France how good the Colombians have gotten -- the upstart took the No. 3 team in the world down in the group round before falling to England. But here's the question: Will you watch? Or is soccer apathy a thing of the past only when it comes to men? The so-called knockout stage is one of the great things about the World Cup, and if you haven't been watching yet, now is the time to start because all bets are off. It doesn't matter that the U.S. won Group D, and it doesn't matter that Germany annihilated Ivory Coast. All that matters going forward is that you don't lose, because if you do, you're out, something Brazil now knows all too well after its loss Sunday to Australia. If the United States beats Colombia, it will face China on Friday in the march to the final on July 5. But don't wait until then -- there are five reasons to watch now: Watch Netherlands vs. Japan Live Online Fifa Women's 2015



While the earlier era of the Women's World Cup Netherlands vs Japan was a battle among just a handful of teams, coming into this tournament there was a wide range joining the perennial favorite German and U.S. squads: Japan, Sweden, Norway, France and Brazil. Seeing teams such as Cameroon make it to the knockout round, and squads such as Thailand get on the board during group play, means the women's game is expanding. From the get-go then, this tournament has been complex, interesting and nothing like those early rounds of the 1990s. So while heavy favorites remain, there's still a lot of room for just about anything to happen, evidenced by the Matildas' waltz over Brazil on Sunday."
 

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