I know it was a bad call. I know it all seems terribly unfair. I’m already getting nasty twitter responses to my thought that good breaks and bad breaks all kind of even out.

Look people, I don’t mean that literally. I can do the math. I know that the total gift goal against England resulted in one point and the nullified goal against Slovenia resulted in minus-two points. But, karmically, in soccer you take the good and the bad.

The U.S. is willing to take the good: the major, major, “my 12-year old could stop that shot” break against England. And the lack of call in the opening seconds against Slovenia that could have had Clint Dempsey sent off and left them playing a man down the entire match.

But the bad? Team USA is awfully good at dwelling on the things that go against them. Right now, their anger is fueled by the outrage back home. Cool that people care so passionately. But the team needs to disassociate from all that emotion.

They need to stop talking about Slovenia and phantom calls and focus on the task at hand.  A win still gets them through.  Time to stop moaning and questioning and study Algeria, which is clearly better than advertised.

The U.S. team came out in the first half looking like they thought their result against England had already put them through. It wasn’t until they fell behind 0-2 that they found a passion and energy and resilience that was wonderfully impressive. As good as anything they’ve done in the World Cup since 2002.

Remember that.  Forget the call. Move on.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 19th, 2010 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.