Our Cup Runneth Dry

The United States men's national soccer team played the Netherlands this past Saturday in the round of sixteen at the World Cup and, as expected, lost. 3-1.  As Billy Joel would have said, they had the Midas touch . . . until they met the Dutch.

This raises a lot of questions.  How come we keep getting our hopes up with these lovable losers?  Why does the women's team always have to save our honor by winning their World Cup the year after?  Why did the Yanks blow so many scoring opportunities?  Who honestly thought they could beat the Dutch anyway?  And if the Dutch national color is orange, why do they have a red, white and blue flag that's virtually indistinguishable from Luxembourg's?

I keep hearing stories about how the U.S. Men's National Team has yet to peak, and that they could be real contenders in 2026, when the World Cup is held in North America (the United States, Canada and Mexico) and play mainly on their home turf.   All they need is a better striker, a stronger midfield lineup, and yada yada yada . . .

That's as may be.  American sports fans woke up Saturday morning excited about soccer and went to bed Sunday night after watching twelve hours of NFL games. 

As The Tokyo Olympics Near the End . . .

First of all, Allyson Felix won a two more career Olympic medal for a total of eleven, a bronze medal in the 400m race and a gold in the women's 4x400 relay race on a team that was rounded out by Sydney McLaughlin, Dalilah Muhammad, and Athing Mu. This makes Felix the most decorated American track Olympian ever.  And if that weren't enough, Jessica Springsteen earned a silver model in equestrian team jumping. 

Taking bronze medals home to America are Simone Biles on the balance beam and the U.S. women's soccer team while Canada won the gold medal in women's soccer.  And in case you missed it (and you did, because all sports talk these past few weeks has been about the Olympics), the U.S. men's soccer team won the CONCACAF Gold Cup.  Amazing - they could actually be contenders in the 2022 World Cup!

The men's soccer Olympic tournament?  I don't want to talk about it.  (That is, Brazil won.)

Also, congratulations to two more bronze medalists - Molly Seidel in the women's marathon and Paul Chelimo in the man's 5,000m track race.

That out of the way, the turn for the worse in all things COVID requires me to address the Winter Olympics in Beijing.  First of all, despite COVID, they're still on.  Second of all, because the Delta variant made it over from India to China in a spectacular example of what I regard as karma, China is suffering a major outbreak they haven't seen since the Communist government invented the pandemic. Third, despite the delta corona, China is set - dead set - on having the Winter Games in 2022, as scheduled, rather than 2023 (and the pandemic should definitely be over by then).   Needless to say, a lot of people in the West and Americans in particular are ticked off about all this, and bipartisan group of lawmakers in Washington are trying to get the Winter Games postponed, canceled or moved.  Not just over COVID, but for persecution of the Uighurs un Sinkiang, threats against Taiwan, the crackdowns in Hong Kong, and everything else.   

Good luck with that. The Chinese have so much power and influence that they can get away with anything, and nothing is going to stop the Communist government from Beijing in the first place having the Winter Games in Beijing on schedule.  Nothing stopped them from getting the 2022 Winter Games in the first place, despite the fact that Beijing hosted the Summer Games only a decade or so ago.  Certainly not a bid for the 2022 Winter Games from the only other city interested  - Almaty in Kazakhstan.  So, once again, we'll have to watch athletes competing in empty stands and officials not just in face coverings but presumably, because they'll be outside at skiing and bobsled events, hazmat suits.  (Respiratory viruses can spread much faster outdoors in winter weather.)  

Oh yeah, I just found this out about the Winter Games.  Remember when winter Olympiads were only ten days?  That all changed when the organizers of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary expanded the duration of those Games to sixteen days in part to make room for more winter sports but also to add an additional weekend of competition to please corporate TV sponsors.  And once Winter Olympiads got staggered in alternate even-numbered years, they may have become more important, but they also became more bloated.  In some respects, the change from ten to sixteen days was necessary; the Winter Olympics had gained such scant attention before 1988 that the International Olympic Committee considered getting rid of them all together.  But given that we are now seeing major cities rather than cozy mountain hamlets hosting the Winter Games - the 2026 Winter Olympics will be hosted by two Italian cities, Cortina d'Ampezzo and Milan (Cortina d'Ampezzo alone was enough for the 1956 Winter Games) - was it worth it?

Right. I've been arguing against Beijing hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics since long before COVID hit, mainly because the climate in northeastern China will require a lot of artificial snow to make it work, but now for many more reasons.  I still say, move them to Almaty - as Borat would say, Winter Olympics for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan!

Nice! 

       

Goal!

You know, I'm one of those disgruntled souls who grew cynical about patriotism, largely because I found so many scoundrels taking refuge there. To paraphrase Bill Maher, I grew tired of Americans yelling how we're number one even though we don't have the objective rankings and studies to back up our claim. I have been hugely embarrassed at this country being seventeenth in the number of women in elective office, twenty-second in controlling infant mortality, twenty-fifth in mathematical aptitude, thirty-seventh in health care delivery, and forty-ninth in literacy. I have bitched about how our high incarceration rate, our high murder rate, our massive military spending, and our coddling of millionaires at the expense of everyone else.

But when Landon Donovan scored the deciding goal late in the second half in the U.S. men's soccer team's match against Algeria, I couldn't help but cheer. I was proud to be an American. They did it. The American men's soccer team proved that the United States is a force in the game to be reckoned with. They showed that soccer is growing in America, and that it's becoming more accepted and more mainstream. They proved we have some of the best, most talented, and the most determined players in the world. They never gave up. They pulled through. They now advance to the group of sixteen out of 32 teams.

It almost makes me forget that, according to a recent survey, 41 percent of all Americans believe Jesus will return before the middle of the century.

Oy.

More World Cup Musings

Could the United States win the World Cup after all?

Maybe not, but they're playing with such determination and passion that they're outshining many of the European teams right now. The French team is failing so badly to gel, it's become a national crisis back home. England has played so haphazardly, they're acting more like the losers of 1066 than the winners of 1966. And the Spaniards lost to Switzerland, which actually isn't as embarrassing as Germany losing to Serbia.

The Americans could have lost to Slovenia 2 to 0, but came back in the second half of that game to tie it and avoid utter humiliation. They couldn't avoid a disallowed goal that would have given them a winning point, and they still have no idea why Malian referee Koman Coulibaly ruled against them. But given all the jostling and shoving that preceded Maurice Edu's goal, I'm not entirely sure it was a fair shot. No one's sure of the exact reason, and Coulibaly isn't explaining. Meanwhile, the American team is trying to put it in the past in concentrating on what should be an easy win against Algeria tomorrow.

Except that Algeria forced England into a scoreless draw.