Soccer will never be taken seriously in America, and winning the World Cup might as well be an impossible dream, so long as we coddle losers with orange slices and a pat on the head.
With a 2-1 defeat, the United States got the boot from the biggest sporting event in the world by Ghana. Ghana? Really?
If you truly love soccer, you should be ticked.
“This is a terrific group and we’re proud,” coach Bob Bradley said Saturday after his U.S. squad was eliminated from the round of 16. “We’re also disappointed.”
Disappointed?
Until defeat tastes like dirt and anything less than winning it all is unacceptable, the United States is doomed to dig the ball from the back of its net at the World Cup.
If Bob Knight were the coach of a soccer team that won one time in its last three games against the likes of Slovenia, Algeria and Ghana, he would have made Landon Donovan and his mates walk home from South Africa.
What’s Bradley going to do? Take everybody to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard?
In 2010, Team USA has no business losing to Ghana. The West African nation is the size of Oregon, suffers from poverty that forces more than 25 percent of its population to live on less than $1.25 per day and does well to produce a soccer team ranked 32nd in the world.
There were shining moments by the Americans at the World Cup. Donovan proved to be a clutch shooter in situations when no second chance was allowed. Tim Howard often stood tall in goal. Michael Bradley produced enough relentless energy to light up the pitch. The comeback mentality of Team USA allowed a new soccer audience to see the real attraction of this beautiful game is the delicious anxiety of dancing on an emotional knife’s edge.
But spare us the phone calls of commendation from President Barack Obama in recognition of the U.S. men advancing from group play. Did we send thank-you notes to Chrysler for paying back its federal bailout?
It’s time for soccer in America to demand the best.
Soccer haters waiting for the game to go away might as well hope that cellphones are a fad. Check the television ratings for the World Cup match between England and the United States as compared with the Stanley Cup Finals and try telling me nobody cares about soccer.
For those who love soccer in America, it’s time to stop settling for consolation prizes and start asking the tough questions that long have been part of the debate in football, basketball and baseball.
After U.S. strikers Jozy Altidore, Robbie Findley and Herculez Gomez failed to score a single goal in South Africa, are we fair to ask how big a mistake it was to leave Denver South High School product and Colorado Rapids star Conor Casey off the squad?
If skier Lindsey Vonn can beat French and Austrian women down the side of a snowy mountain, then is it too much to expect red-blooded American males to believe a win in soccer against Brazil or Spain requires something less than a miracle?
For those consumers no longer content to buy the Triple-A product being peddled by Major League Soccer in this country, will MLS stop the condescending attempt to sell us David Beckham or some other fading international star and make a stronger effort to bring back Clint Dempsey and other players born in the USA home to play?
Because I’m crazy for soccer, it brought me out of my seat when Donovan rescued Team USA with his goal against Algeria. But, for me, the more important scene for soccer in the United States was a dejected Donovan sitting alone on the team bench after the loss to Ghana.
Unless dreams die hard, they can never come true.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
