Question No. 18: After USA's exit in the round of 16, should American soccer fans be disappointed? Proud? Ambivalent? Frustrated but appreciative?
I'd go with the latter. Heading into the Ghana game, the stars had aligned in three ways: Landon Donovan's Algeria goal had totally passed the Mom Test back in the States (in other words, even my mother, who barely follows sports, knew about it and had an opinion on it); USA had a shockingly easy road to the semifinals (for whatever reason, the other half of the bracket was stacked); and Donovan and Tim Howard were playing as well as anyone in the world. An improbable semifinals trip and Lord knows how much domestic momentum was sitting there on a platter. So really, they blew it. And they blew it for frustrating reasons (Bradley's bizarre lineup choices) and legitimate ones (no American forward could have started for a Premier League contender, much less any Cup favorite). We scored five goals in four games: two on hustle goals off second chances, one on a penalty kick, one on a brain fart by England's goalie, and Donovan's goal against Slovenia, which came with the help of a mistimed defensive play. Not a single "WOW!!!!!!!!!" play among them.
And what's what worries me about the ceiling of American soccer. We reached a certain plateau in 2010, a little like a 47-win NBA team that everyone knows can't make the Finals. Watch how those crafty Germans bang home scoring chances, or the blinding speed of their young stud Mesut Ozil on the wing. Rewatch that "WOW!!!!!!!!!" goal scored by Uruguay's striker to beat Korea Republic, or the one by Tevez in the Argentina-Mexico game. Team USA never made you scream "WOW!!!!!!!!!" for a really good reason: We don't have a player with that kind of chops. This was a team of grinders and overachievers. We didn't have enough speed without Charlie Davies, and we certainly don't have a world-class striker who creates scoring chances out of thin air. In four Cup games, our forwards scored zero goals. That's why we went home over everything else.
By 2014, maybe young Jozy Altidore (only 20) will get there; he certainly has the physical gifts, although it's unclear whether he has any scoring touch. (It's the difference between Dwight Howard's low-post game and Pau Gasol's low-post game; you can work at it all you want, but you'll never be as good as the guys who are born to put it into the net. A guy like Germany's Miroslav Klose could find the far post falling out of a wheelchair when he's 60. It's a DNA thing. I am convinced. So the worry is that Jozy has too much Howard in him and not enough Gasol.) Maybe Davies and Fast Young Guy X will provide that missing burst on the wing. Maybe Teenage Prodigy X is four years from saving us and we don't even know his name. But you can't advance to the semifinals without the "WOW!!!!!!!!!" factor. Impossible.
(Important note: I want Simon Cowell to create a reality television competition for Fox called "American Striker." That's the only way we'll find one by 2014, barring Jozy jumping a level or a foreign stud miraculously defecting. And don't rule that out. Can't we find a multibillionaire sports fan to "convince" an up-and-coming striker to become an American citizen before he commits to another national team? Larry Ellison and Paul Allen: Step it up, fellas.)
Question No. 19: Thanks to last year's Confederations Cup and Donovan's extra-time goal last weekend, do you think soccer is finally taking off in America?
Put it this way
When I was in the third grade (1978), people thought soccer was taking off in America.
When I was a freshman in college (1988), people thought soccer was taking off in America.
When I was a barely employed wannabe sportswriter in Boston whose life revolved around the O.J. Simpson trial and partying every night (1994), people thought soccer was taking off in America.
When I was living in Boston with my fiancée and writing for ESPN.com (2002), people thought soccer was taking off in America.
I am 40 years old. I live in Los Angeles. My hair is turning silvery white. I have a wife, two kids, a mortgage and that same ESPN column. Guess what? People think soccer is taking off in America. Only this time
I agree with them.
Question No. 20: Wait a second
you agree with them? YOU AGREE WITH THEM???? You sap! They say this every four years and it never happens!!!! Klosterman is right! You are the Manchurian Soccer Candidate!
Hear me out
When Donovan scored that Cup-saving goal against those spineless playing-for-a-tie-when-they-needed-to-win-by-two-goals Algerians, the moment resonated like no other goal in American soccer history. We didn't have anyone telling us how we should feel, what the implications were, what the moment meant. We knew what it meant. We wanted more games. We wanted our boys to keep playing. Someone scored. We celebrated. We jumped up and down. We ran around the room. We were alive for another game. For once in a fragmented sports world, we all happened to be rooting for the same thing.
When does that happen anymore? In 2010, you can follow any athlete, whether he plays 13 miles away or 3,000. You can watch any game you want. You can read any and every opinion that exists. You can find out information as soon as it happens, instead of 12-18 hours later in a newspaper. You can interact with other fans who love your team; you can butt heads with the people who hate them. You can tweet your thoughts on a big play as the players are still celebrating it. You can root for your real guys and your fantasy guys. You are fanatically autonomous.
We didn't have nearly as many choices when I was growing up. Either you rooted for local teams or you jumped on a successful bandwagon (such as the Steelers' or Cowboys') because they were always on national TV. The days of "I'm going to fall in love with Oklahoma City because I love watching Kevin Durant, even though I live in Maine" were still decades away. Eight-Year-Old Me rooted for the four Boston teams, Ali, Nicklaus, Connors and Leonard. I hated the Yankees, Raiders, Dolphins, Canadiens, Flyers, Sixers, Munson, Nettles, Stabler, Clarke and Kareem. I liked Earl Campbell and the Oilers' uniforms. I liked David Thompson and George Gervin. I loved all Topps cards. I loved Gerry Cheevers' mask. I loved Terry O'Reilly and Mike Haynes. I loved Freddie Lynn more than anything. And those were the only real sports opinions I had.
Fast-forward to 2010. What shapes Eight-Year-Old Me? How would EYOM settle on 10-12 things to love and hate? How would EYOM differentiate substance from nonsense? How could a moment stand out for EYOM when everything gets televised or covered? It's total sports overload. Too many choices, too much noise, too many extremes, too many niches, too many forums, too many opinions, too many people trying to stand out. You become numb after a while. The only thing that never gets old? Winning in the most dramatic way possible, then basking in the glow of that dramatic victory with as many people as possible.
Recently, Tiger Woods came closest to uniting everyone for a common rooting interest -- remember the 2008 U.S. Open? -- but his career imploded and he squandered that momentum indefinitely (if not forever). There is no "Wildly Popular American Athlete" or "Wildly Popular American Team." We even turned on Brett Favre. We only share the Olympics together, every two years. A rotating cast of athletes that fleetingly capture our affection, and after that, we never consider them again.
The U.S. soccer team could own that "everyone" domain for the simple reason that it's unattainable for anyone else. We always want our national soccer team to succeed; it would be un-American to feel differently. There's continuity through the years when certain players (such as Donovan, Howard and 2010 breakout star Michael Bradley, locks to make the 2014 World Cup) stick around for a prolonged time. There's always a finish line (the Cup every four years), with dozens of exhibitions, smaller tournaments and World Cup qualifying strewn in between. If you want, you can extend your attachment by following American stars on their club squads. Add everything up and it feels like following the Lakers, Red Sox, Niners or whomever.
(Note: I knew I was hooked on Saturday, after Bob Bradley started Ricardo Clark over Maurice Edu, when I was sending e-mails back and forth with friends much like I would have done had Doc Rivers started Tony Allen in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. What the hell is going on? Why are we doing this? Is Edu injured or something? This is terrible! WHY??????? You may have been sending those same e-mails to your buddies, too. That's the "everyone" domain.)
A cynic might say, "Come on, you could have said the same thing when we beat Colombia in 1994." No way. You need time with these things. Decades. You need kids like me to grow up with soccer in their lives. You need a few memories to stack up. You need it to happen organically. The theory that soccer would never catch on until we found our own Pelé or launched our own successful pro league was dead wrong. We only needed to be exposed to great soccer for a prolonged period of time. We're American. We only respond to the best. The cream of the crop. Nothing else is going to fly.
We don't care that much about Donovan playing for the L.A. Galaxy with guys who couldn't sniff the Premier League, just like English people wouldn't care about seeing Dwyane Wade playing with a bunch of D-Leaguers in London. We want to see Donovan tested against the best. In the months leading up to the 2010 World Cup, I watched Donovan play big games for our national team, for the Galaxy (in the playoffs), then overseas for a solid Everton team. I knew he was a world-class player. I knew he was legitimate. I wasn't stealing that opinion from a magazine or a talking head. The hours I logged with Donovan made me feel invested in him.
It's just easier to care about soccer now. Actually, it's something of a perfect storm -- the technology in place, the flaws of our own professional sports, the efficiency of soccer games, our longing for the pre-JumboTron days when people just cheered and that's what fans did, our best-of-the-best fetish, ESPN's unwavering commitment to pushing the sport, the urgency of every game -- that makes more sense as a whole than it did 10 years ago. After that crushing Ghana defeat, the U.S. players weren't devastated just because they blew a winnable game, but because they knew a growing number of Americans actually cared and it wasn't simply a bandwagon thing. (The TV ratings backed it up: an astonishing 19.4 million U.S. viewers.) It was like pining for the same girl for four years in college, finally hooking up with her one night, then getting kicked out of school the next day.
Dammit! I blew it! I had her! We could have had something!
Regardless, the U.S. completed Stage 1. Soccer is no longer taking off. It's here. Those celebratory YouTube videos that started popping up in the 24 hours after Donovan's goal -- all unfolding the same way, with a stationary shot of nervous fans watching the game in a bar, going quiet for a couple of seconds during the American counterattack, reacting to Dempsey's miss ("Nooooooooo!"), holding their breath for two beats ("Wait a second
"), exploding on Donovan's finish ("Hi-yahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"), then chanting "USA! USA! USA!" afterward -- tapped into a collective American sports experience unlike anything since Lake Placid.
I would never compare Donovan's goal to Mike Eruzione's goal, or compare the significance of an early-round World Cup game to the best American sports night ever. But you can't tell me Donovan's goal was a fleeting moment or a lark. Each celebration clip that landed on YouTube could have been any American bar, any group of American friends, anywhere. Like John Cougar Mellencamp's annoying Chevy commercial sprung to life. Only it wasn't annoying. I thought it was glorious. Those clips choked me up. Those clips gave me goosebumps. Those clips made me think, "I forget this sometimes, but I'm glad I live in the United States of America."
Rasheed Wallace loved to say "ball don't lie." YouTube don't lie, either. We will always have the Algeria game. Always.
