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Friday, June 16, 2006
Dreaming the impossible
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
AP / Everyone hates Goleo, the World Cup mascot, but he doesn't care.
Let’s knock out today’s games right away, since you probably know by now that Argentina crushed Serbia and Montenegro 6-0 and Holland held on to eliminate Ivory Coast 2-1 as the Group of Death favorites advance to the second round.
And Off the Ball just lost 10 bucks in the Cup pool, thanks to Mexico’s 0-0 draw against a shorthanded Angola.
It’s ingrained in the American psyche to be eternally optimistic, and surely that’s a tack Bruce Arena has to be taking as the U.S. faces Italy Saturday in a must-win situation. It’s as simple as that. To dream the impossible dream. Even without the disastrous opener looming as a backdrop.
As disheartening as Monday’s loss was to the Czechs, the aftermath has been even more unsettling. Unless you’re inside the U.S. team, as Brian Ching says on his blog: Don’t believe the media. The Yanks get along rather well.
As for Italy, an opponent the U.S. has never beaten, well, the Azzurri don’t know who Bruce’s boys are, with a couple of exceptions.
Listening to XM Radio’s evening World Cup call-in show this week, the topic is inevitable: What does the U.S. have to do to produce the creative, instinctive players that the world-class sides do, in lieu of not having all of our best athletes at our disposal or having soccer ingrained deeply, and prominently, in our culture?
The simple thing to do is bash the highly structured suburban youth system for producing rote players unable to proceed on their own wits and imagination. And keeping that in mind, hearing Bobby Convey remark this week that U.S. players “didn’t know what to do” during the game, especially after the early goal from the Czechs. This is one of the upcoming leading lights for the Americans, coming off a wonderful season for a team promoted to the English Premier League.
There have long been calls to close the suburban-immigrant disconnect in USA, but those two elements seem as unlikely to come together as a U.S. win on Saturday.
We’ve had all kinds of expats on these shores for several decades now, and all their knowledge and feel for the game is overshadowed by the associations and clubs and programs that employ them.
Even if hundreds of thousands of Latino kids and coaches get involved in these programs in coming years, their participation is bound to be “Americanized” like the youth outfits in football, hoops and gridiron.
That’s the essence of our sports culture, so the soccer problem will remain the same.
Oh, enough of that dreary stuff. I’ll leave you with a few fun blog links to start the weekend.
Who let the frogs out? Not the French, but the ones that supposedly bothered the Ukraine team so much it got drilled 4-0 by Spain. This is as lame as it gets.
It’s not just me: England is boring as hell to watch. No further confirmation needed.
Who’s having an even worse World Cup than the Ukraine and now, Serbia-Montenegro? It seems as though everybody hates the mascot. Here’s hoping they’ll never hear — or see — the Phillie Phanatic.
