Note: this was written yesterday but my Wordpress upgrade to 2.8 seems to have hiccuped.  I’m still trying to resolve the issues.

There are times when a sports fan wants to kick himself for not calling their shot.  You could say that about me right now.  But then again, I wouldn’t have done it.

I knew the US National Soccer team had the ability to play much better than they had and produce much better results but I honestly didn’t believe they would…well not this soon.

I’m gonna back up a week here.  Last week, I read a blog piece by GolTV’s Phil Schoen about the National Team and, well their lack of anything.  His main argument, as I understood it, was that it’s not Bob Bradley or US Soccer’s fault that the team is producing poor results.  It’s the lack of players who are capable of producing the results.

I responded on his Facebook post:

He replied:

Now, here’s where I messed up, I didn’t respond.  It was more a time thing than anything else because I felt a rant coming on.  Essentially, I would have said that I honestly believe that at pretty much every position we have more talent.  However, at almost every position we haven’t seen the determination we were used to seeing with the teams from the 90’s to around 2004 or so.  The players now just seem to “phone in” a lot of these matches.  Their heads aren’t in it and, most annoyingly, they haven’t seemed to care.  Phil was right, there was no true leadership on the team…but I still disagree with his assessment of the talent available to Bradley.

And then Sunday happened.  I watched the match against Egypt in awe.  I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  No, the US did not dominate the match as much as the result might indicate.  However, the team appeared to have a totally different mindset.  It was as if they started to read all the blogs and tweets being sent out about how poorly they were performing and for the first time in a long time, in a match which wasn’t against Mexico, the appeared to care.  Yes, even in the match against Italy, they just didn’t seem that bothered.  All the stars were aligned and the US won their way through to the knockout rounds.

Yesterday they somehow took things to another level.  For the first time in a long time they went out in a match where they were underdogs and didn’t look like they were playing not to lose…they actually went out and looked like they wanted to win.  How many early goals have we given up early in recent matches?  Instead, it was the Spanish goal which was under attack in the opening moments.  The US really played with poise and confidence.  While nerve wracking, it was very enjoyable to watch.  Spain, like any top team, will always be tough.  They had their chances but the US backline did a great job of keeping their shape.  The midfield was strong, challenged for every 50-50 ball and won at least half.  Lately, the forwards have been left stranded and usually only got a touch if they dropped back to help the midfield.  Yesterday, they had good support and the US was able to attack in decent numbers.

I sat there wondering who that team was.  What flipped the switch?  Bradley has made some changes to the lineup which seems to have worked.  However, it’s not just the chemistry between players which has brought this change.  The team is playing with confidence for the first time since….well, maybe since the game against Germany in ’02.

Now, in any other country yesterdays result would be huge news.  To be honest, it was here as well, for about 15 minutes.  The game finished at about 4:30 here.  I had ESPN360 on in the corner of my monitor while still working.  I left the office a little after 5 and listened to ESPN Radio on the drive home.  It was the top news story on their updates but the conversation was more on the coach in Iowa who was murdered.  The host did give the US result respect and a mention though.

I got home and saw that Landon Donovan would be on SportsCenter at 6:30.  Excellent!  Nothing really earth shattering about the interview.  It was done by phone cuz ESPN don’t have any cameras (or people—commentary is being done from the studio) in South Africa.  The questions were nothing special.  The host read them without any follow up on any answers.  I honestly believe they had some intern do some quick digging for some questions just to be able to say they covered the news.  I left the TV on while doing other stuff and when I check back they had a show on the NBA Draft which I assume is about to start.  Personally, I find drafts themselves to be boring but a show about who a team may or may not draft?  Well, that killed the buzz about the result.  Later the rumors about Shaq’s trade dropped the result even further down the sports media’s list of stories.

Here’s the thing.  My friend Mark Fishkin summed up my thoughts on the media coverage very well with a couple of Tweets.

That’s it!  The media just doesn’t understand that there are lots of people in the US who are interested in the sport.  The media keep trying to jump on the bandwagon when something happens but jump off as soon as possible because they are out of their depth.  There are just a handful of writers in the US who cover the sport.  On TV, there are even fewer.  Most of them do not cross over into other sports.  Those that do try but generally aren’t great.

But anyway, this morning I listened again to ESPN Radio but they’d moved on to…heck, I don’t even know what they were talking about.  Some college basketball coach, errr..it wasn’t at all with remembering.

So, has anything changed?  I doubt it.  Hopefully the US will come out of this with more confidence as a team and start producing more of the types of results we know they are capable of. 

But the media over here won’t change.  It’s too bad though.  Remember, the train companies used to be kings but they were unable to see the potential of Air Travel.  Could all the soccer fans be finding their own media?  Will this leave traditional media out in the cold?  Probably not, but it’s worth thinking about.

Ok, on to Brazil on Sunday.  I wonder which US team will show up?  Who cares? I’m still enjoying this.