Match day Nine review

Have you ever seen one of those "Emotion" refrigerator magnets? It has a set of about 25 silly faces on them, each corresponding to a different emotion. You're supposed to put a little magnetic frame over the emotion you're feeling that day, so for instance, if you feel cheerful, you put the frame around the little cheerful face.

I bring this up because if I had such a magnet right now, it couldn't capture the weird mix of emotions I'm feeling about the USA's 1-1 draw with Italy. It's a blended cocktail of pride, relief, and anger, with a shot of exhaustion poured in at the end. (Which I realize is not an emotion. Please excuse me; I'm a bit of a basket case at the moment.)

I think it's good at this point just to look at the scoreline for a moment and not think about what actually happened in the game, which the Guardian have called "one of the most surreal matches in World Cup history." Every US fan would have happily taken a 1-1 draw against Italy. In fact, the notion of us even drawing a major power like Italy in a World Cup would have been unthinkable even five years ago. So it's an incredible result just from that perspective.

To think that we did it 9 on 10 for half the game is simply extraordinary. What a performance by the players. As a team, they looked less exhausted than the Italians at the end (Reyna being the big exception. I expected Olsen to come on for him, but I think Arena didn't want to risk a last minute injury and go down to 8.) Keller... massive. Onyewu... massive. Donovan... one of his best games for the US. He brought stability just when the US needed it and ran tirelessly. Convey and Dempsey were great before their inevitable sacrifices. Conrad... made his World Cup debut by coming in against a world power with only eight other teammates. Incredible.

There's really no need to say this, but the refereeing by Jorge Larrionda was flat out shitty. The Mastroeni red card was the call of a coward, afraid he had given too much of an advantage to the underdogs. The second Pope yellow was justified but the first wasn't. Nesta did bring the ball down with his hand in the box quite clearly. The Beasley call is a difficult case... under the current interpretation of the offside rule the goal counts, under the former it's offside. Little wonder Wikipedia has semi-protected its entry on Larrionda; apparently someone was already calling him a wanker before the match even finished. (Apparently Larrionda is a parrot-breeder. I hope they go all Hitchcock on his ass when he gets home.)

This is one of our best results in a World Cup, and one we can build on. The permutations of group E scenarios are labyrinthine, but basically we have to win and preferably big. Later on, I'll try to speculate on how best we should do that.


I feel guilty that I can't say more about Ghana's splendid 2-0 win over the Czechs. I was having a few people over for the Italy game and spent most of the Czech game helping to prepare lunch. But I did see the two goals... egad, do Ghana look good. It will be a remarkably tough game with the US on Thursday.