All That Glitters Isn't Gold

While the women's World Cup soccer tournament was going on in France, the 2019 CONCACAF Gold Cup was going on back in this hemisphere for the national men's soccer teams of the Americas.  And you probably didn't even know about it.  You may not have even known that the championship game for the Gold Cup took place in Chicago yesterday while the women's championship game was in Lyon, France.

And with good reason.     

The U.S. men's team, the defending Gold Cup champions from 2017, lost the final to Mexico, a national team they haven't defeated in six years. 

I wrote yesterday that the American men's team's failures often coincide with the women's team's successes.  But this may be the first time they coincided on the very same day.

And the men lost on home turf.

What are we paying them again?

The women are getting a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan's "Canyon of Heroes."  I propose that the men's team get a parade in an appropriate urban downtown district.  How about Newark or Detroit?

We'll even have ticker tape thrown at them.

In bundles.

Some of you will say it's easy for me to bash the national men's team when I don't play soccer myself.  No, I don't.  And neither, apparently, does our men's team.    

Going For the Gold Cup

After an uninspiring game or two in the CONCACAF Gold Cup men's soccer tournament, the United States  scored an impressive victory over Costa Rica this past Saturday to make it the championship game.  Our guys will play Jamaica tomorrow in what could be the prelude to the most exciting World Cup ever next year.  (Jamaica upset Mexico to win its championship berth.)  The United States, contrary to its reputation as the ninety-five-pound weakling of men's soccer, has in fact won five Gold Cup championships, and the team has shown obvious improvement of late.  Could this be the setup for our boys' best-ever showing in a World Cup come 2018?  Could they even be a . . . Cup favorite?

We'll find out soon enough.  I'll certainly be watching the Gold Cup championship game tomorrow night.  It'll be a refreshing diversion from what's going on in Washington, particularly the Russia story.  Ironically, the 2018 World Cup is taking place in . . . Russia.