Back in 2008 I went to a U.S. men's soccer practice in Miami to write a column about the team's World Cup qualifying match in Havana, Cuba. It was interesting because of the politics of Americans playing in a country that has been subject to a U.S. trade embargo since 1962 and where Americans still are restricted from traveling.
When I arrived at the practice, the USA PR flak rather snootily asked me if I was there only to write about the Cuba angle or if planned to actually write about soccer. I remember thinking his attitude odd because he should be happy for whatever media attention the team gets considering soccer’s second-class status in America. And I wondered if the team actually did get more attention if the Americans would be ready for the scrutiny that inevitably comes when people care.
That brings me to Michael Bradley, America's World Cup goat of the moment. The general American public gets into soccer just in time to see Bradley blunder away the USA's chance to guarantee a spot in the knockout stage. Bradley's inexplicable giveaway led to a tying goal for Portugal.
You’ve got to feel for the guy on some level. Some Americans might know that Bradley is the son of former U.S. national team coach Bob Bradley. It’s likely that even fewer know that Bradley played two seasons for top-level club Roma in Italy’s Serie A league after three seasons with a good team in Germany’s Bundesliga, making him one of only a few Americans to stick in some of Europe’s best soccer leagues.
Now the multiple millions of Americans who watched Sunday's match will know Bradley only as the guy that gave away the ball with the U.S. milking a lead against Portugal.
Bradley got the ball with plenty of space. If he had controlled the ball for a bit, passed it to a teammate or even booted it down field at Portugal's end then the clock runs out and the Americans win. Instead, he was bullied off the ball and his turnover led to Portugal superstar Cristiano Ronaldo's beautiful crossing pass to teammate Silvestre Varela, who sent a headed past goalkeeper Tim Howard for a 2-2 tie in the final seconds.
If the Americans had won they’d be guaranteed to advance to the knockout stage. Now they need to beat or tie powerful Germany on Thursday to assure advancement or, if they lose, hope the Portugal-Ghana game breaks their way.
The Americans still control their fate and played a good match against Portugal. All is not lost.
#USMNT just drew with 4th-ranked team in the world. And we're disappointed. Something very special is happening with soccer in our country.
This may be true but the sudden draw felt like a gut punch to me and the other Americans who'd been celebrating what seemed to be a certain victory at the Brewhouse Cafe. "Late shock interrupts U.S. Party" is how the New York Times put it and for those of us at Brewhouse, this was literally true.
I’m one of those people who love the World Cup but not soccer in general. I can’t tell you much about club play in Europe or anywhere else but every four years I get geared up for the spectacle of the world’s soccer championship. I don’t understand some subtleties of the game but I don’t need to know what a holding midfielder is to see that Bradley’s miscue squandered what probably would have been the biggest victory in modern U.S. soccer history.
Bradley also missed a point-blank goal attempt earlier in the match but it was simply bad luck that his volley went right at a Portugal defender’s knee. The giveaway was a gaffe.
"When you see goals, it’s always a sequence of mistakes that happen, and that’s unfortunate, but that’s why goals happen," U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann said in a news conference after the game. "In that moment, I think Michael Bradley got caught in the middle of three or four guys and lost the ball, unfortunately. Then the counter break comes and even if we had in this moment three center backs on the field, we were not able to get to that cross."
That was probably a sensible explanation of events by Klinsmann. Soccer is a team sport. Bradley didn’t leave Varela unmarked near goal. Bradley had nothing to do with an earlier miscue that led to Portugal’s first goal. He helped set up Clint Dempsey’s go-ahead goal that seemed to be the winner.
But we Americans don’t do gray areas in sports. When things go badly we want simple explanations that place blame on one person, and we’ve found Bradley to be a perfectly good target for our frustrations.
I guess it's progress that we care enough to notice Bradley's mistake and heap scorn on him for that and also his deflection in a post-game interview with ESPN when asked if he blames himself for the ending.
“I put my heart and soul into every game every time I step on the field,” Bradley said. “It’s a cruel game sometimes. I’m proud of that and proud of what I’m about every time I play, and there certainly is no regrets in my book.”
If that snippy PR flak is still with the U.S. soccer team I wonder if he’s happy now.
About the Author
