TEAM AMERICA! F*%$ Yeah!

I didn’t want to post this yesterday in case any readers (all 3 of you) had recorded the game and wanted to watch it without spoilers.

As I have stated many times, I am a casual soccer fan, I only watch a little bit of the Chicago Fire because they are the local team, and I try to catch the finals of the premier league, UEFA Cup, etc. What I enjoy most about soccer is National Teams.

So I’ve been trying to watch as much of the confederation cup I can with the odd time zones. I missed the first American game, which was probably a good thing because they played terrible in the 2nd half vs Italy. I turned on the second game, and saw it was already 2-0 Brazil, so didn’t watch most of that. The final game of the round robin stage vs Egypt I didn’t watch because it was so improbable for America to make it to the elimination round. They had to beat Egypt by 3 and Brazil had to beat Italy by 3. I don’t know how many of you watch soccer, but 3 goals is a lot for a game, especially for an American team that had yet to score one that wasn’t on a penalty kick. Also, Egypt had played very well against both Italy and Brazil that I wasn’t even sure if USA would win. Well lo and behold as I went to bed that night I flipped on SportsCenter to hear their coverage of the US Open Championship. They led with the intro with a great line from Dumb and Dumber, “So your saying there’s a chance!” (which was also apparently a rally cry for Team America). They laid out the scenario that I just did, and to my utter amazement, everything worked out perfectly for the Americans. Italy was trying everything to put just 1 goal on the board but was continually thwarted by the Brazilians.

After the dramatic finish to squeak into the semi finals I heard the great news of who they were playing. Spain. #1 Ranked team in the world and reigning Euro Cup Champion (Like the World Cup, but just for Europe). Team America had only 1 win against world #1 ranked teams ever. So again the game didn’t look to promising. I was joking with a buddy before the game started that I expected the score to be 3-0 Spain with a 12-4 shots on goal advantage to Spain, basically saying Spain would dominate the game. It was a 1:20 start yesterday and I was at work, so I couldn’t watch, I didn’t even watch on gamecast on ESPN.com. I got back from a meeting expecting the game to be over, and USA blown out, when I ask my buddy, how’d our boys do? He said it was 1-0…..no now 2-0 America, we just scored again. HOLY CRAP! TEAM USA did it again.

So, to do my part to help team USA, I’m going to predict here, that Brazil or South Africa is going to make quick work of America and I will not be watching this Sunday, because the game won’t matter we won’t be in it anyways.

TEAM AMERICA! F*%$ Yeah!