It is 35 minutes into the United States' match with Belgium
in the Round 16 game of the FIFA World Cup. They were placed in Group G, the
"group of death," as NPR put it. Even the team's coach, Jurgen Klinsmann,
had little faith in the team's odds at becoming World Cup champions;
"We cannot win this World Cup, because we are not at
that level yet. For us, we have to play the game of our lives seven times to
win the tournament." (npr.org)
Whether the U.S. defeats won't make what the U.S. has
accomplished any less memorable. Three times in a row, the U.S. did play the
game of their lives. They won the first game with Ghana 2-1, tied with Portugal
2-2, and, against Germany, as Stephen Colbert, wearing a red, Styrofoam finger,
exuberantly shouted on "The Colbert Report," "We came, we saw, and we lost!"
But they lost with style. As the narrator of the game put
it, it was "a matter of pride" (ESPN). Thanks to a 2-1 victory from
Portugal against Ghana (time.com) towards the end of the U.S. game, the team
would be advancing to the knockout rounds anyway, but sometimes, it really is
how you play the game that matters. They fought hard, determined "not to
let Germany score another point," as the game's narrator put it. And the
entire game was played in the pouring rain.
I don't think anybody expected the team to get this far.
But, whether the U.S. wins the World Cup or not, it proved its doubters
wrong. A small miracle happened, too: the U.S. team got me interested in
soccer, or football, as the rest of the world calls it.
Shout it out loud, Stephen Colbert. "We're number two!
We're number two!"
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