was the usa natl anthem totally butchered? (during ghana game) I am certainly not blaming our loss on this, but, I thought the anthem sounded hurried, fans and players could not sing to it because it was too fast and the volume seemed to go down several times to the point when you could no longer hear it. So is it just me? I always love to hear the natl anthems, especially this one, I am pretty sure they did something, which would be kind of interesting when you think that during interviews players said they get a better mindset after listening to the anthem. Once again, I am not blaming our loss on this, its just a detail, but it does make me think about why? what do you think?
From what I heard, that was the sound of 20,000 supporters singing the anthem all around the stadium. It is very difficult to stay on tempo with a choir spread out that much around the stadium. Same thing happened at the Hurricanes Stanley Cup Final Game 7 I was at a few nights ago, and they even had a vocalist singing and the words displayed on the jumbotron.
Here's the video I took of the national anthem played before the US vs Italy match. It was a chilling moment. The pace of the song seemed about right to me. Maybe a little faster than normally played, but not too bad. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8054692201112490486
The question was about the Ghana game, and I agree- on TV it seemed like the music was too fast and the crowd was a beat slow; but that was not the crowd's fault. The CR match was nothing of note over the TV, I think US fans had not yet clued into the sing your a** off rule. The Italy match was perfect.
one note about nuremberg, somehow, probably with the way the canopy was angled, there was a echo that easily threw people off beat. i think that was one of the reasons we couldn't get something going for a good stretch (but we didn't do bad). this may have contributed to the way the crowd sounded on tv during the national anthem. didn't seem to be a problem in kaiserslautern or gelsenkirchen.