When the final whistle sounds on the final match of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games for the United States national team, what then?

BY GRAHAME L. JONES

Every red-white-and-blue-blooded American fan hopes it won't be until the gold-medal game, and that the reigning world and Olympic champions will have successfully defended their title. But that's not the point here. The point is, what comes next?

Do the ``magnificent six'' ride off into the sunset, their two world championship gold medals and their one or two Olympic gold medals flashing in the waning light? That's the conventional wisdom. That's what is expected of Mia Hamm, Carla Overbeck, Kristine Lilly, Joy Fawcett, Julie Foudy and Brandi Chastain.

Even the youngsters on Coach April Heinrichs' team believe their time has come, that the last remaining veterans of China '91 finally will call it a day. Just ask forward Christie Welsh. ``You can see that after the Olympics, the national team is going to be a new team,'' the 19-year-old told the New York Times. ``There are a number of players who will move on. They've done everything they could possibly do, and the Olympics will probably be the last thing for a lot of them.''

Think again, Christie.

Conventional wisdom has been that the six would bid the national team their fond farewells after Sydney 2000. After all, as Welsh indicated, what more is there for them to achieve? Wealth, that's what. And sure, Overbeck will do the same. In her case, family considerations are taking precedence ``I am planning on getting pregnant right after the Olympics,'' she said, explaining why she will not be taking part in the inaugural season of the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA). ``So I'm going to take the first year off and then join up with the league in it's second year. I would love to play as many years as I can.''

So the odds are Overbeck will play her last game for the U.S. in Australia -unless U.S. Soccer sees fit to do what it should, and gives her (and Akers who retired recently) a farewell game--a testimonial, if you will--on these shores. The other five, however, show every sign of carrying on, of fighting off all attempts to strip them of their national team jerseys--even Chastain, who has been known to voluntarily take her own off in quite the most public of places.

Lilly not long ago played her 200th game for the U.S., making her the first player in history--male or female--to represent her country in that many matches. Jokingly, she was asked how long it would take to get to 300, as if that were an impossibility. It isn't. Judging by the way she is playing and her continuing enthusiasm for the game, it might not be a joke at all.

``Can you conceive anyone beating that number of caps when she does retire?'' former U.S. coach Anson Dorrance asked before the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup last summer. ``The thing about it is, this [the '99 World Cup] isn't going to be the end, or even the next Olympics. We still have another World Cup [in 2003, probably in Australia] and another Olympics [in Athens, Greece in 2004], if she really decides to go after it. ``And if you think where the end of her professional career might be at a high level, that's almost never-ending as well.''

Especially now that WUSA shows every sign of blossoming into the sort of league that the American players have dreamed of for a decade. One reason why it will succeed is the high-level involvement of former U.S. coaches Tony DiCicco and Lauren Gregg. DiCicco is acting as WUSA's interim commissioner, and if sense prevails the interim tag will soon be removed. ``If I'm asked to be the commissioner, that's what I'll do,'' DiCicco said. ``I'm enjoying this. I know there are a lot of tremendous candidates out there, but to see this thing born and emerge where there was nothing, it's almost like I don't trust giving it to anyone else. I want to make sure on the technical side it's done right. ``But if it doesn't work for me in the commissioner's position, I'd be very interested in coaching in the league.''

Gregg, meanwhile, is heavily involved in lining up the best possible players for WUSA, including 32 top-flight foreign stars. With a salary budget of $800,000 per team, the average player salary in the league will be a healthy $40,000. ``We're very proud of that figure,'' DiCicco said.

Obviously, the world champions will earn considerably more than that- probably in the six-figure range. That, combined with performance incentives, sponsorship bonuses and other income means that the China '91 veterans will be pocketing a fair bit of change. That's reason enough to keep playing, and as long as they are, their personalities and competitive nature will demand they do so at the highest level.

``The quality of this league is going to be somewhere [close to] where the World Cup games were last summer,'' DiCicco said.

Which is why it is going to be interesting to see whether Heinrichs makes wholesale changes after Sydney 2000 or retains the veterans who have put the sport on the international map. In October, after the Summer Games Chastain, Fawcett and Overbeck each will be 32; Foudy and Lilly both will be 29, and Hamm will be 28.

None of them will be over the hill, by any means. They seem, however, to have been part of our lives forever, but that's simply because they were teenagers when they first started on their long climb to international fame. Now--and not a moment too soon--fortune has joined fame. And that's why the six will all keep playing, for WUSA, for the USA or for both.

Foudy and Fawcett will appear strange in their San Diego uniforms; Lilly and Boston might take some getting used to; Chastain's San Francisco strip will be novel; and Hamm and Washington is an odd combination. Where Overbeck winds up is anyone's guess, perhaps it will be at an expansion team in North Carolina in 2002, when WUSA intends growing from eight teams to 10, en route to 12 in 2004. But for fans of the women's game, the happiest thought is that all seven will still be playing, that one of sports' greatest stories still has more chapters ahead of it.

Lilly summed it up neatly on the occasion of her 200th appearance. ``The game of soccer has grown incredibly,'' she told the Associated Press. ``The attention we've gotten and the support we've gotten, it's just amazing. We were there when we had nothing, when there were no endorsements and we weren't getting paid. ```What hasn't changed is why we play. I think the greatest thing is that people have finally caught on to it and love it like we do.''