Legendary result? We’ve scored 1 goal in the last 4 matches. A tie is fine against a better team in the qualifying stage, but you can’t draw yourself to advancement in the knockout stage. What’s the answer for when they have to have a goal?
Yeah, legendary result. England consider themselves the stewards and top exponents of the game and their team is eternally top 10, sometimes top 5, in Elo rankings. For all of our meaningful progress in building a national soccer culture and development program, we are a relative small fry. How do you think they're feeling today? Go browse the ThreeLions subreddit if you want a sense. And however they're feeling, we should be feeling the opposite. Do you remember last time we played them in a World Cup?
And this wasn't one of those scoreless draws where we withstood a 90-minute siege, either. We weren't being bombarded and having our goalie stand on his head or getting bailed out by defensive block after block. No, we took the game to them, neutralized their attack with some impressive tactics, and created the better of the chances. So, yeah, be happy. It's OK to give yourself permission to be happy.
"you can't draw yourself to advancement in the knockout stage" -- I'm sure I don't have to tell you how frequent it is that matches go to penalty shootouts, and you know what happens then? One team wins the shootout. Ask Croatia from the last world cup: they beat Denmark in the R16 on penalties, beat Russia in the QF on penalties, and then was tied with England in regulation before beating them in extra time. Not conceding goals is a very important part of the game, and one which we have not been good at at this level.
Having immaculate vibes after a draw with England and a draw with a Wales team they should have beat sounds a lot like accepting the status quo of happy-to-be-here.
The fuck is this? I don't recall seeing you around these parts over the last 5 years as we picked ourselves up from the swamp of Couva, rebuilt the program with a youth movement of talent who ended up being world class in their own right, filled holes in from some brilliant dual-national recruiting, and slowly forged a team together basically out of nothing. You show up at the moment they're really tested having no idea of the team's narrative arc, and think you can write it for them, negatively, after 90 brilliant minutes vs England? Which was collectively probably the best they've ever played? FOH with that nonsense.
This wasn't "let's have the same core ride again" like in 2014. This team has, for
years now, been trying to find the right chemistry with each other, been trying to achieve consistency - same with very young players and young teams in any sport the world over. The first time Yunus Musah stepped on a field for the US, in a friendly against Wales in
November 2020, everyone's eyes bugged out seeing the MMA midfield for the first time and how they absolutely bossed the game. For the first time, things clicked and we basically had the run of the place against a Welsh team that is - to be clear - very, very good, roughly our peer by ranking and result. And you know what? We didn't score that day either. But the building blocks were there, and that's what's important. We've gotten plenty of empty results, I'd rather have real predictors of future success.
Our progress was measured over the last 5 years mostly by Mexico, our real pacing challenge. The depths of the post-Couva lows were set by our losses to them in the 2019 Gold Cup final and then a subsequent friendly, where we largely got slapped around. That was basically the last time anyone heard from most of the players who played those games. Instead, our future team spent time building up chemistry, which went well enough that when the A-team faced them in the Nations League final in June 2021, we basically stunted on them aside from an early error by Mark McKenzie. Then our B-team did it again a month later in the Gold Cup, with a heroic defensive effort for 120' and a late-in-extra-time winner off a set piece. And the momentum continued into World Cup Qualifying, where we played basically the best match I've ever seen the USMNT play in our home game vs Mexico in Cincinnati - we slapped
them around for 90 minutes, and the 2-0 scoreline frankly flattered Mexico. Everything that our talent predicted that we
should, someday, be able to do, our guys went out there and
did.
But it hasn't all been a bed of roses. We've had collapses, we've had failures to score, we've had boneheaded errors. We're a very, very young team, I think the youngest at the WC by some distance. That means inconsistency, as it always does in any sport. We had a shocking loss to Panama, we had Canada largely dominate two games against us, we had a disappointing showing in our finale in Costa Rica. Oh, and we had a game in the Azteca where Mexico was running scared, Gio Reyna put the fear of god into them with a run where he dribbled the entire team, but they somehow managed to keep us out of the net for 90 minutes and drew 0-0. Sound familiar? Point is, we've seen this team
grow. If you've been following them the last few years, you've watched a team coalesce from nothing, from a bunch of raw teenagers, who do things like
talk about their fish tank for their 3 minutes of fame. We've watched Antonee Robinson go from "too raw for a call-up" to "too good to leave off the field". Sergino Dest now pays attention at least 80% of the time, a massive improvement. And our entire team is still young, young enough that they'll continue to improve, this isn't the best they'll get individually, nevermind as a team that knows how to play with each other.
So yeah, dude, we're all happy to be here. Happy that we could qualify with a bunch of kids, after the disaster that our over-the-hill veterans wrought last time around. Happy that we could show our potential in a few key games along the way, rise to the occasion more often than not. Happy we could work out the bugs and inevitable setbacks, get through some injuries. And we're damned happy that when really put to the test, going up against a team with absurd talent like England, we could go toe-to-toe and give as good as we got. Because England is a team where their fans can only be happy with a trophy and are fucking miserable on all other occasions, and that's just a no-fun way to go through a sports fandom. Whereas the USMNT has been on a steady, if inconsistent, rise for the last 30+ years, and keeps getting better and better, and anyone who's been following the team for more than a week can measure its progress at times like these. It is
rewarding to follow this team, to see where it's going, and where it's going to bring soccer in America to. Stories like those of Matt Turner, Shaq Moore, Ethan Horvath, are the kind of underdog storylines we can all root for, as opposed to the England team full of guys who were anointed as the next-big-thing at age 13. This team is for people who can dream on a squad, dream on a performance, dream on a world where we're a
player in world football. If you don't want to dream - if you want to jump straight to "entitled, never-happy fan" - then hop right the fuck off the bandwagon, nobody will miss you.