Avoiding the Drop

If you’re reading this, you know the US lost in the Confederations Cup Final to Brazil. If you didn’t know that and you’re reading this site, you got some splainin to do! It doesn’t really matter, every single person said they’d be happy with 2 to 3 points from this affair before the tournament (if you said otherwise you didn’t pay enough attention to the USMNT before the tournament or I need you to give me next weeks lottery numbers).

My esteemed colleague TwoYellows put it best when he said:

I think if you could have told everyone at the beginning of the tournament that the US would make the finals and lose by a goal to Brazil, everyone would have been on board.

A crushing defeat always hurts, and an amazing win puts you at the top of the world, but in the end we need to look at the bigger picture. That is that this entire tournament was a big step forward for the USMNT, and gives the team an excelent outlook ahead of the World Cup, it’s also raised expectations quite a bit.

The one thing I love the most about this game is the fact that you can change your fortunes within a matter of minutes. Looking back in our own archive alone you could surely find a number of flip flopping articles about specific teams or scenarios. Hell, I know for a fact that in my weekend reviews I went from calling Arsenal a crappy UEFA Cup squad to thinking they were the greatest team ever. No other sport gives you drama close to that, and the US achieved that sort of drama.

Nine days ago you could have told most people Bob Bradley had been replaced on the sideline by Setanta’s Jose Mourinho puppet and nobody would have batted an eye. Now I’m almost certain he’ll hold onto his job till at least after the World Cup. Hopefully he’s not given free reign to do whatever he pleases as I still think he needs to be on a short leash and needs to stop his experimentation as much as he has been doing. However perhaps he’s finally figured out this squad and how to best operate it. He seemed like he was losing it after the Costa Rica and Honduras games, and it was only compounded by getting knocked around by two world class squads in Italy and Brazil.

But along with a little bit of luck, something changed in the Egypt game and it’s carried on into the last two games. We can be disappointed that the US lost to Brazil, but thats a world class side with players that demand €68 million transfer fees and players you’ve never even heard of starring in tournaments like this.

Meanwhile you could probably buy the whole US side for €68 million. It’s safe to say that the US outplayed themselves in the past two matches, but hopefull they can carry that momentum with them into the remaining qualifying matches and into the World Cup. Losing this game was probably the best thing to happen to this team though.

Yes it would have been nice to say we won the international equivalent of the Club World Cup and throw a trophy into the USSF trophy case, but a loss serves the program better in the long run.

I point you to the 2006 World Cup where the US was ranked a laughable 5th in the FIFA rankings, ahead of eventual finalists Italy and France. The expectations placed upon the squad were far too high and they failed to live up to them, and a win yesterday would have put them in a very similar position. Lets face it, 90% of the American sports media knows about as much about soccer as Stephen H. Webb.

With a win todays papers would have seen articles written stating that the US was the best team ever and they’d be winning the World Cup come next year. Raised expectations do nothing to help the sport if we hope to grow the love of the game to levels that a sport like hockey has managed.

If the soccer awareness is to grow in this country, it needs to gradually build itself. Surely this latest explosion of interest will lead new fans to the game, but this also swells the bandwagon to extremely high levels that will drop off in a few days. Bandwagons are great as they bring exposure and a injection of money into the system, but unless the momentum that created the bandwagon can grow, it can’t really continue solid long term growth.

The team has also felt the sting of being oh so close and losing it. Had they lost to Spain nobody would have really felt horrible about it, provided it wasn’t a blowout. But it wouldn’t have given the team that needed spark. But that didn’t happen and they got to the biggest spot that anyone on the team had gotten to, and it slipped out of their hands. Come time for the World Cup the thought of getting to that point is going to be a perfect motivational tool for this team. They’re all going to want to feel like they felt before the game yesterday, and none of them want what happened after the game to happen again.

Will they win the World Cup? Probably not, but I think we can all say with confidence that they won’t be bowing out of it as easily as they did last time.