German Quagmire

Wasn’t there a war in Latin America triggered by a World Cup qualifying match?

“Seeing as Italy is the U.S.’s next opponent bribery stands a very good chance of working”.
Many thanks from your faithful Italian readers.

Well, I gave a damn about the game. Wish I hadn’t, though.

I especially enjoyed the bit of BBC commentary which said that the USA is a similar country to the Ivory Coast. You don’t hear that often! (It is obviously false, btw, since the Ivory Coast play much better football.)

They even got a pregame pep talk from President Bush, who called from Camp David before the game and wished them well.

No wonder they were running in mud. The last thing I would like to know is that I’m representing that worthless sack of shit in any way, shape, or form.
.

Well… looks like Italy’s going to beat Ghana, which means the U.S. squad is going to need a miracle (or two) to get past this round. The Czech side really made them look silly today.

Soccer is a game many Americans actually play unlike baseball and American football, which are used by men mostly as excuses to sit on their asses, drink beer and pretend.
Soccer is very popular in the US. Basketball is the one game Americans both play and watch.

“Soccer is very popular in the US.” Isn’t its popularity limited to the suburbs and the Middle Class? Soccer needs to get into the hearts and minds of the American under classes, who know how to take their sport seriously.

I’ve made the your argument and been ‘corrected’ more than once. Soccer is played in high schools all over the US: witness “Soccer Moms.” It’s less popular as a viewers’ sport, and class still has a lot to do with that, but its role has mutated from that of the prep-school game it used to be.

Soccer isn’t in the minds of america’s underclasses???
prep school sport????
Were talking soccer, not lacrosse.
No statistics here but I think that the latin and other recent immigrant communities are generally at the low end of the income segment and they seem to be rather taken by the sport.

Soccer’s played everywhere in the U.S. It’s just that in my experience, it’s usually everyone’s back-up sport. It’s what the football squad does for conditioning in the off-season, or what the kid just too short for the varsity basketball team does for sports, or the slower track kid does.

But it’s not watched at a top level as much, unless you watch the Hispanic stations. As a result, the talented young athlete will be likely funneled into one of the money sports; it’s not uncommon for kids to play two or three sports until high school and then concentrate on a) their best sport or b) their favorite, and their favorite is often decided by the ones where their dreams are.

In any case, the solution, obviously, is foreign aid to the needy American team, so we can mount a search and rescue for our missing offense.

Re: OP and future strategy:
The British FA has learned that Luca Toni, Andrea Pirlo and Fabio Cannavaro have sought to purchase large quantities of referees. We cannot allow the smoking gun to become a 3-0 scoreline. Thus, while the US team fervently wishes to avoid it, we must reluctantly confine these players to our training facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Re: Our (most recent) national shame:
I suppose since I’m not to care about football it shouldn’t bother me, but goddamn it does: we got schooled. Since Euro 2004 I’ve been a big fan of the czechs, and losing to them is not shameful, but the way we did it was. Sure, we went through the motions of playing a match of football, but there was no creativity, no passion, and sure as hell no skill.

Rosicky’s goals don’t bother me quite so much: the first was pure brilliance and the second was made possible by our need to send loads of men forward. The first, however, was utter crap. If our left back Lewis, who plays left wing for Leeds(!), was forward, mastroeni should have covered. If neither did, convey should have filled in. But nobody did and the czech left winger had more space than NASA.

And none of this excuses our lack of creativity or teamwork. The only player to come away with any credit was Reyna.

Note to Bruce Arena: there’s a technique called marking. Have your players use it next time. Also, remember: who controls the midfield wins the game.

The best hope for the US v Italy is the fact that the game is taking place in Kaiserslautern, which is full of Americans and where I fell in love with the sport.

the us won’t be able to compete with the other nations meaningfully until US leagues become as competitive as those of other nations. while i appreciate that some US players are playing in other leagues, most aren’t. what you saw was the difference between top competitors and other competitors, and you can’t buy that – it’s pace, attack, ruthlessness and guile in motion and there’s no substitute.

i come from south africa, and we have the same problem. while here, the sport is massively supported, the infrastructure is more corrupt/inept (depending on the extent of your charity) than even italy. the nett result is that the actual standard and intensity of play in the year-round leagues is pretty low, lacksadaisical (sp?)and otherwise pressure-free. (my brother goes so far as to call it cargo-cult football, and to an extent he’s right.)

this gets shown up every 4 years.

the US seems to be in a similar predicament. which is odd. when you think of the large mexican-american and hispanic population, the basis of an intital audience exists, and certainly the cash to pump into the game exists. so maybe there’s a disconnect betwen the potential audience and the current leagues or something.

further note:

this…

“it looked like they were trying to protect a 1-0 deficit”

…is really funny.

They even got a pregame pep talk from President Bush

Sadim does it again.

The problem with soccer’s popularity in the US is that it doesn’t fit well into our TV format. Too hard to advertise.

People watch golf, figureskating, and poker on TV, fer cryin’ out loud.
.

“People watch golf, figureskating, and poker on TV, fer cryin’ out loud.”

Soccer is constant play. The only way to have ads is to scroll them accross the screen or give them a box in the corner. Lots of people watch the superbowl for the multimillion dollar commerical/mini-film/rock videos.

The difference between capitalism as an aspect of culture and culture as an aspect of capitalism.

“European socialism”

It’s called “Social Democracy” I think.

“Today’s result shows diplomatic good wishes won’t do it, so that leaves the other two standard policy tools for strategic foreign intervention…”

Five, actually. Let Sir Humphrey explain – the context is learning that a visiting African leader is set to give a rather inflammatory speech:

“Well, Minister, we have the usual six options. One, do nothing. Two, issue a statement deploring the speech. Three, make an official protest. Four, cut off aid. Five, cut off trade relations. Six, declare war.
“But if we do nothing we implicitly agree with the speech. If we issue a statement we just look foolish. If we make an official protest it will be ignored. We can’t cut off aid because we don’t give him any. If we cut off trade relations he will be unable to negotiate the oil rig contract. And, if we declare war, it might just look as though we were over-reacting.”