[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

Our defense is actually what saved us. It could have been better, but we won by having the best goal differential in goals allowed, not goals scored.. remember this was a group of death and we just shut down the best offense in FIFA to ONE SCORE?????

USA earned this yo. Its a fucking Group of Death and we competed well.

Beating Ghana sent them home, period.
Drawing against Portugal sent them home, period.
Keeping Germany to just one score sent us through, period.

This is BIG for USA futbol, and I dare say we can play well against Belgium if we just tighten up our mistakes. Against Portugal we just fell apart in the final minute of injury time. Against Ghana we were solid defensively but our offense got stagnant against a better defense. Against Germany the 1st half was about as good as USA is going to get defensively and we managed to have some great offense and control of possession, all credit due to Germany who rushed all our attacks thoroughly neutralizing them.

I don't think Belgium has the same level of defense as Ghana or Germany, so naive as it is, I like our chances to advance to the Quarters..

A lot of Americans will not understand the intricacies as to why this was a great World Cup showing, indeed, they may just think we sucked. They need to take it in the context of American sports..

i'm going to leave your analogies out: of course it's a big result, but you underestimate the public i think-- i just saw pictures of people celebrating in big cities. they understand.

about the defense, we were lucky they scored only 1. could have been 3 easily. we did suck today. just not in teh aggregate.

today the pivot was bradley and he kept losing and losing balls. which is why we couldn't move up the center. brad davis was a zero but at least gave bedoya a break. once yeltsin got in things got exciting for us for a little bit on his flank.

the thing is though we're much better when we go forward. this kind of masochistic passivity cannot work in the long run.

ghana could have easily fucked us. they scored an own goal. say they don't do that and score another, and germany scores another, and we're out. this was a very close shave. for me it was a very tense match.

i'm glad we go through, but i got a bad taste in my mouth from today's performance. one thing is to defend a tie, another is to defend a one-goal loss. i understand scoring back and sitting on it but this was too much.

of course germany is really the better team, one-for-one their players are amazing. but i see us with more chances when we go forward instead of playing it all inside our own half.