If this goal doesn't happen, Americans go back to not caring about soccer for the indeterminable future, and who knows how much longer it takes for the sport to gain real and serious ground in the United States? We'll follow and support national teams as long as they're winning, but as soon as they start losing or otherwise choke (and a tie to Algeria most definitely would have been classified as one of those) we go back to watching Wipeout and wishing (real) football would start.
As it is, Landon Donovan kicks the ball in the net and we care about this sport for at least another few days.
Also, I find it interesting that the two most important goals for the U.S. came when the opposing goalie was unable to fully control a save. Not sure how frequent an occurrence that is, really, but in general I like it when the team I'm rooting for actually beats their opponent, rather than the opponent beating themselves. This feels kind of cheap. Maybe I'm way off base here, though.
3 comments:
I agree with you on the first goal being a failure on the opposing goalie, but I disagree with you on this one a little. I don't know how unreasonable it is for a goalie to maintain possession after a shot like the initial shot in that video. It seems pretty often that the ball will rebound out in front and it is the defender's job to make sure that either 1) the ball is kicked out immediately or 2) that they at least slow down the offensive players so that they can eventually clear it.
It just seemed like it was a good pass by Donovan followed by some very attentive positioning (knowing that a ball would rebound out in front like that) mixed in with a bit of bad defense and topped with a fair amount of luck.
But the rest of your post I agree with. America will care until next round when they get knocked out... or the next one. America is the Utah Jazz of the world cup though :) We'll be back next time.
The US deserved it. They already had that one goal from the last game called off and another legit goal called off again this time. I never thought that I would get nervous while watching a soccer game.
Wipeout is so cool.
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