How Ingerland Is Killing England...
My take on our progress against our friends across the Atlantic...
1) On the field...well, our winning streak against England in just about anything that matters (wars and soccer matches mostly) remains undefeated. The English fans can continue to call us crap but that makes it P2 W1, D1, L0 for the good ol' US of A and P4, W3, D1, L0 if you include the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 ;-)
2) In the press...seems that our media (and apparently the President of our Soccer Federation) is picking up the habit that John Nicholson eludes to in his article, namely that of overestimating our chances of winning.
You can quibble with some of Bradley's line-up decisions (especially Ricardo Clark of Maurice Edu) but I'm not sure that was really the difference between us winning and losing last Saturday. We were probably about even with Ghana both on the field and in terms of talent. It would have been great to win but to say that the team failed to meet expectations by losing to an equally matched team seems to be putting our program at a level it just hasn't achieved yet.
Anyway, just a few thoughts as I read the fallout from teams dropping out of the tournament.
With teams going home, hopefully the transfer action (as opposed to the rumors) will pick up soon.
My take on our progress against our friends across the Atlantic...
1) On the field...well, our winning streak against England in just about anything that matters (wars and soccer matches mostly) remains undefeated. The English fans can continue to call us crap but that makes it P2 W1, D1, L0 for the good ol' US of A and P4, W3, D1, L0 if you include the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 ;-)
2) In the press...seems that our media (and apparently the President of our Soccer Federation) is picking up the habit that John Nicholson eludes to in his article, namely that of overestimating our chances of winning.
You can quibble with some of Bradley's line-up decisions (especially Ricardo Clark of Maurice Edu) but I'm not sure that was really the difference between us winning and losing last Saturday. We were probably about even with Ghana both on the field and in terms of talent. It would have been great to win but to say that the team failed to meet expectations by losing to an equally matched team seems to be putting our program at a level it just hasn't achieved yet.
Anyway, just a few thoughts as I read the fallout from teams dropping out of the tournament.
With teams going home, hopefully the transfer action (as opposed to the rumors) will pick up soon.
i was pretty surprised that the president of the U.S. Soccer federation said that as well. it's kind of funny (and sick) that he talks about the "missed opportunity" in terms of ratings, not a missed opportunity for our country to do well in the biggest tournament in the world. At this point, I could care less if more people in the U.S. get interested in soccer. The discussion always is framed around the "market" here in the states and that seems to be everyone's motivation for growth of the sport here; just to make money off it..
ReplyDeletethat is the unfortunate side of all things. the market drives everything. without a market we would not have internet, tv, radio, newspapers, blogs, magazines, films and other cultural things, so it is easy to bring anything to market.
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