Quick thoughts before what idiots are calling "the most important match in US soccer history:"
1) Before this tournament, expectations were VERY low that the USA would advance out of this group. Why is it suddenly an imperative that they do so? This is senseless. The entire mission of this World Cup finals experience for Klinzi was to put together a team with quite a few youngsters who would then be ready for Russia in four years. No Donovan, no Eddie Johnson--this was essentially the "developmental" World Cup for the Yanks.
2) Klinzi is going nowhere. He is on a long-term mission, so his job is NOT on the line. I am well and truly sick of Eric Wynalda and his senseless pronouncements, and what he said yesterday about Klinzi being fired after today if the USA does not advance proves just how ridiculous he has become--as if the idiocy he spewed during the FA Cup final wasn't convincing enough. The point is that there is no pressure on the manager to take this team beyond the group stages, so very little hangs in the balance.
3) The fanciful notion by the non-footballing world in the USA that losing today will somehow kill off the growth of the sport here proves once again that football writing should be left to people who know about football. They (these people raised on the tedium of baseball and gridiron) are once again marveling at the packed sports bars and plazas and parks where tens of thousands of football supporters are gathering to watch USA matches, conveniently forgetting the scenes of madness 4 years ago when Donovan scored the last-second winner versus Algeria. All the same tired stories feigning shock at the crowds following the matches have been trotted out again, seemingly with a simple "find and replace" done to change "South Africa" to "Brazil." This narrative is BORING, OLD, and NEEDS TO BE RETIRED. The establishment has to simply accept the fact that the sport is now popular here. It is the second-most popular sport in the USA among people under the age of 35. Can we start writing something new about football support in the States?
4) I saved this one for last on purpose. From strictly a footballing perspective, the most important match in USA history was the round of 16 match versus arch-rival Mexico in 2002. It's not up for debate. This was the match that made the rest of the world finally take notice of the burgeoning football culture in the States. There has never been a bigger, more pressure-packed match than USA against its most bitter enemy for a chance to advance to the quarterfinals. It proved that the USA could win a big match on a big stage, and it validated a youth programme that had produced Donovan, Beasley, Mathis, Wolff--all of whom contributed to the team's success that tournament. How could anyone with even a passing interest in the sport and a connection to the interwebs not know how big that match was in the growth of the game in the USA? I'll go on to say that in the 1990-present period of the USA matches, today's match is not even in the top 10 in terms of importance. Ending Spain's unbeaten streak, drawing with England in 2010, beating Mexico to win the Gold Cup, winning at the Azteca (finally), being cheated by Germany and a Uefa official out of a trip to the semifinals in 2002, simply qualifying for Italia '90--how can these idiots elevate a "Group of Death" match where the team has already miraculously taken 4 points above all of those?
So there you have it. Wretched sports "journalists" in the USA, you should just admit that you don't know anything about the game of football and stop trying to frame it in your Cold War perspective that doesn't work anymore. The outcome of today's match doesn't matter at all in the overall growth of the sport. I'm assuming you haven't bothered to see the crowded stadiums in Seattle or Portland or the sold out matches any time a big European club tours the States, so perhaps you just write another boring column about Lebron James or the New York Yankees. Your career, like your newspaper, will soon be a thing of the past.
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