A long time in the making ...

... that goal, the American's success, this blog post.

In extra time, just as everything looked lost, this scrappy and talented American team tapped into unbelievable energy reserves to make one last, glorious, barnstorming run on the Algerian goal. And when Landon Donavan slotted home the rebound off Clint Dempsey’s selfless body thrust/shot, he made an emphatic statement for the future of this game in our country.

For 90+ minutes, over coffee instead of a pint, we cheered, screamed, agonized and celebrated. When it was over, I wasn’t sure how to shake the buzz. To the detriment of my considerable list of chores, I spent the rest of the day watching highlights, chasing that feeling of elation. It was without a doubt the most engrossing sports watching experience I’ve ever had. Choosing my words carefully, I told Krista it might well have been the best non-marital day of my life.

As it turns out the fallout from that goal is just as exciting. In topping Group C by virtue of goals scored (three, versus England's two), the U.S. has vaulted into what is without doubt the easiest quadrant of the bracket. Consider the FIFA rankings, however dubious they may be. The United States, ranked 14th, is the technical favorite (don't tell them that) for a spot in the semifinals, ranked higher than Ghana (32), Uruguay (16) and South Korea (47). This means it’s now guaranteed that from among this unheralded quartet there will be at least one surprise guest in the semifinals.

By contrast, in 2006, the semi-finals comprised Germany, Italy, Portugal and France — for those of you new to this, that's a who's-who of traditional football powers. The quarterfinals were equally stacked with the football establishment — Argentina, England and France. And if Spain had opted for more cynical gamesmanship and allowed winless Saudi Arabia to win their final group game, they, rather than Ukraine would have drawn Switzerland in the Round of 16 and found easy passage to an all-favorites quarterfinals.

Eight years ago in Korea/Japan, the Round of 16 resembled the one now set in South Africa. There is an argument, made tacitly or otherwise, that the tournaments not held in the cradles of football (Western Europe, first; South America, second) cannot provide an optimal environment for the tournament. There’s another argument that says if the best can’t perform outside the comforts of home, then they really shouldn’t be considered the best. I prefer the latter.

As it stands, France and Italy, the two finalists from four years ago are on their way back to the comforts of the Western world. I couldn’t be more excited about what their departure means for the rest of the Cup. As for those two [former] powerhouses:

On Tuesday, France crashed out of the tournament in disgraceful fashion. The three-game debacle on the field was punctuated by locker room sniping and player revolts off it. And now the embarrassment has apparently reached the level of state scandal. French president Nicolas Sarkozy is allegedly taking meetings this week with striker Thierry Henry and football officials. The subject of the meetings: how to save French football. Politics has long colored just about everything in France, but in a crisis of this magnitude, apparently football takes precedence.

And as of yesterday, France's 2006 finals opponent Italy is out, too. The reigning champions dropped their must-win game against a hard-nosed (until you touched them) Slovakian team that simply wouldn't cower before Italy's imperious, patient, and, ultimately, doomed game plan.

There are so many story lines, one hardly knows where to begin. That the Italians arrived with the oldest team at the World Cup had plenty of pundits questioning their title chances; but most expected the always-formidable Italians to cruise through the group stage. Wrong.

Then there was the shocking fact that the defending champs, the prototypical practitioners of defensive football, were ultimately let down by slack defending. Not many saw that coming.

One thread will delight a particular segment of the U.S. fandom with a weakness for schadenfreude. Before the Germany World Cup, then-coach Bruce Arena approached Giuseppe Rossi about joining the U.S. setup. Rossi, a Jersey-born, Italian-American, who was at the time just 19 years old, declined, preferring to fight for a spot with Gli Azzuri (Italian national team), for which he was eligible thanks to his dual citizenship.

Four years ago, his ambition seemed hubristic, especially to U.S. fans who salivated at his potential for the U.S. squad but assumed he would never make an impact with Italy. Sure, Rossi had made the move to Europe at 13 and, for an American player, had found unprecedented success at the highest levels. But Italy is perennially one of international football's strongest sides. Moreover, it is a team (and a country, for that matter) that is famously nationalistic and insular in their squad selection, almost always preferring players from the domestic Serie A to Italians playing abroad. That this foreign-born "Italian" also plied his trade in England and then Spain was thought to be nearly insurmountable.

It wasn't. Rossi forced his way into the Italian national program, first as a youth international and then, two years after he turned down Bruce Arena's overture, as a full Italian international. And when Rossi came on as a sub in the U.S./Italy match during last summer's Confederation Cup and scored two brilliant goals to lead Italy to a 3-0 win, when he celebrated as though he'd just realized the only true dream he'd ever had, well, it stung pretty bad for American fans.

Ultimately, though, his outsiderness may have cost him a spot on the plane to South Africa. Rossi was among the last group of players cut from a World Cup squad that included no footballers who play outside Italy. Though it was a point made moot as soon as he played competitively with Italy, Rossi would have been all but assured a starting place on this U.S. squad. Instead he retreated to New Jersey to watch both his birth and adopted countries play in South Africa.

And now the U.S. is in the Round of 16 and the Italians are headed home. Regardless of how exceptional a person triumph he's experienced suiting up for Gli Azurri, that must be a bitter pill to swallow. Who knows, maybe Rossi would have made the difference for the Italian team.

Anyway, back to that U.S. game and what their win might mean for U.S. soccer.

Craving still more feedback on the game, I stayed on as Sportscenter gave way to something called Around the Horn, which curries in "competitive banter." It's no surprise, really, that banter doesn't conform well to a scoring rubric, and the competition is adjudicated—bizarrely and arbitrarily—by a guy with joysticks. The score mounts quickly, confirming every stereotype about the American sports fan—"why not just make the goals worth more points?!"

The one persistent naysayer, who, objecting to his colleagues’ and host’s boosterism earned an early exit, still managed in his short time to levy every criticism against soccer made by Joe American. The game is slow, boring, low-scoring.

His biggest beef with the excitement surrounding the win over Algeria was that it was about a win over Algeria, a team the U.S. was expected to beat. For him, there should be some absolute: as a big country, we should be able to roll over the little guys, and regularly challenge the established sides. Until then, soccer will never find substantial support in this country.

Talk about cart before the horse. The best rebuttal to this familiar argument involves abstract ideas of deep, systemic change, to both the sporting landscape—with increased investment in youth development—and cultural landscape—increased immigrant influence and a general globalizing of culture. In some ways, they’re arguments best appreciated by those sensitive to fluid, non-absolutist concepts, like the fluid, non-absolutist appeal of the game itself. That makes it tough.

But we are seeing progress in this country, and it’s not just in evidence with the U.S. team’s strong run in South Africa. Progress is an expanding domestic league—Major League Soccer grew this year from 15 to 16 teams and will add two more next year. Progress is increased recognition for the sport— this year European club scores elbowed their way onto the bottom-of-the-screen ticker. These are artifacts of the more dramatic underlying shift taking place.

While it's tempting to think of soccer's advancement in this country as taking quadrennial leaps, the truth is the kind of systemic change that's necessary is slow, arduous work. And while it might not be fast enough for the sportswriter old guard to appreciate, it is happening.

___________________

Sometime in the evening I'd torn myself away from the replays but without turning off the TV. From the other room, a voice from the past called me back. ESPN’s Wednesday Night Baseball was beginning, live from Phoenix, AZ, and Dave O’Brien was on the mike.

Four years ago, O'Brien spearheaded ESPN's blanket coverage of the World Cup in Germany. His much-touted credentials included a smooth, patient voice and a penchant for statistics—qualities particularly well suited to his long-time gig as a baseball play-by-play man. They did not include, however, any experience calling soccer games. O’Brien peppered his broadcasts with tangential trivia and didactic explanations, but often missed the action on the field. His approach was indicative of the network’s overall approach, which treated the World Cup more as a curious novelty than an event with drama and skill on par with the NBA Finals or the Superbowl.

Ultimately, O’Brien’s mispronunciations, technical gaffes, and unabashed greenness about the game irked veteran fans and newcomers alike.

Flash forward four years and the sports broadcasting giant has completely rejiggered its approach. The in-studio panels offers a good mixture of thought and passion (with the exception of Alexi Lalas who goes a bit heavy on the passion, short on the thought). And while the in-game tone has a distinctly anglophilic stiff upper lip, it is far more focused on what’s happening on the field, and that’s a good thing. John Harkes is still an idiot, though.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping that O'Brien would use his intro Wesnesday night in Phoenix to tip his hat to the incredible U.S. performance earlier that day, thereby betraying some lingering effect of his dalliance with the world's greatest sporting event. He didn't, but I was plenty happy to see him in Phoenix rather than South Africa.

As for tomorrow’s game against Ghana, I’m optimistic for more life-shaping, time-sucking moments. Donovan, for one, fighting back tears in Wednesday’s post-game interview, put the world on notice: "We're not done yet." Here's hoping.

Enjoy the game.