America the Beautiful

Call it irony. Call it the greatest turn around in World Cup history. Call it destiny. Call it fantastic. Call it a flirtacious, fickle fate- But do not call the Americans OUT.

USA 1 - Italy 1

The world expected Italy to follow the Czech lead and stomp all over the red, white & blue. I'll be honest- I did too. When I turned off my TV after the 3-0 Caech embarassment, I wrote the Americans off. But fate has a fickle finger, and one must never write off a wounded animal.

Lunging from a self-dug grave, Team USA proved overwhelmingly why it deserved to be in Germany against the Italians on Saturday. Landon Donovan did not shy away. He stepped up, ran the ball beautifully and unlike the weak, diving Italian forwards, he pushed through the hard tackles to set up game-changing possiblities.

Clint Dempsey, my man from Foxboro and the New England Revolution was an absolute sparkplug for the American offense. His addition to the starting line-up marked the fundamental break that the Americans made with their loss to Czechoslovakia. Dempsey should start every game. Put McBride in the middle and Beasley on the left, keep Dempsey going.

I have never seen an American toy with European defenders like Clint did. His footskills resemble Brazilian tomfoolery. He actually crossed defenders up, proper LeBron James-style.

Still the man of the match for the Americans turned out to be Kasey Keller. I won't lie to you. I've never liked this guy. I LOVED Fridel in Korea and am still wandering what the hell happened to that rare specimen of an all-star keeper.

But Kasey Keller held down the fort on Saturday, staving off Italian attack after Italian attack and winning the draw for the US. Not only did Keller keep the net closed to visitor's, but Kasey also orchestrated the impenetrable defense of Fort USA. Props.

On the Ref I don't even think I need to address how atrocious the calling of the Italy-US game was. It was terrible. That guy had no idea what he was doing. The calls were at first tight and narrow, then few and far between. The few good calls that the man made were the called-off Beasley goal for obstruction, and the the de Rossi-McBride elbow. Besides that, he threw out Pope and Mastroeni for trivial calls and ruined a sure-fire American victory. Shame on him.

Consequently, the fool also blew several offsides calls for the Italians. Shame on him again.

On Italian Injuries We all know that the Italians "perfected" football, but did you know that Italians also invent the fake-injury, the on-the-field sob and the Sicilian dive? Everytime a US player got near an Italian, the chances were high the Italian player might try something ridiculous to win a call. These guys would even get taken off the field in a stretcher just to get up and skip lithely back to play once the red card was awarded. Forgive my anger, but that is straight BULLSHIT. These guys need a lesson in real hard knocks, and should take a page out of any American's rulebook: play hard until you are really hurt, and never use the Stretcher unless you cannot physically walk. Seriously.

America Advancing? Unfortunately for the US, the prospects of advancement rely on a must-win game over Ghan, and an Italian victory over the Czech. Other situations are possible, but the US would need to win its game with Ghana in any case.

Advancement is given to the teams who score the most points. A win is given three points, a draw one, and no points are awarded for a loss. If teams are tied, they go down to something called goal differential. There, goals for are averaged with goals against, and the resulting number is compared with tied teams.

The current US goal differential is -3.

Still, the world must sit up and take notice of America now. The draw, while unfortunate for future US prospects, does mark an American arrival to world-class competition. For the US to draw with Italy down 2 men and with a goal called back that could have taken them through, America should be proud.

Soccer isn't something that we Americans have in our blood, but the level of skill and infatuation is rising.