This just reminds me, for the umpteenth time, that we need a regional tournament that all the countries actually take seriously. Wouldn't it be great if someday the Copa America was as eagerly anticipated overseas as the Euro Cup and the African Cup are?
Great article by Grant. Would love to see the US play England more, and Wales as well. Last time was Sept 1994 at Wembley. Shearer two goals, but the US played well. It was build up for England and Euro 1996. They were hosts and needed matches(even though the tourney was less than two years away).
Ireland play for an "English" cup? I think not. (We would probably be caught p*ssing in it afterwards....)
Or maybe Twellman will be on the cover of SI in 2006 and Arena will start saying nasty things about him. SI, I'm f-ing begging you: PUT BRUCE ARENA on the cover!!
Hmmm My favorite part were the comments on Mathis by the english commentators.....he has talent. No matter what superdave wants to say.
Too bad Grant didn't say nuthin about us at the 3 Alley Pub in Itaewon when we asked him, (in chant form), Where the Hell is Cameron Indoor?
So, Jamaica, Nigeria, Guyana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Trinidad and Tobago, and some other English-speaking nations get left out? Why? Shoot, it's a lot easier (for Americans, anyway) to understand a Guyanese speaking English than a Scot (or a Geordie, for that matter)!
I really do find this funny superdave. You are comparing him to Mike Tyson and Lawrence Phillips. The problem with that assesment is the following. You are basing it on what you have seen the past two games with DCU. My question is why you aren't blasting the Metros team in general as being extremely erratic and uncontrolable. If I remember correctly, Mathis wasn't the only guy flipping out. Plus the Thursday was one of the worst reffed games of the year. Why aren't you flipping out on them, or the fact that Zambrano has lost control of the team? Why? You're probably going to point out that Mathis is fiery with the nats. So what!!!!! Honestly, before Mathis stepped on that field against Mesico, we've been the hunted for our whole lives. From that moment on, Mathis changed the mentality of the team. There was a swagger now. We weren't going to absorb pressure, we were going to go and dole it out. Mathis did th
I really do find this funny superdave. You are comparing him to Mike Tyson and Lawrence Phillips. The problem with that assesment is the following. You are basing it on what you have seen the past two games with DCU. My question is why you aren't blasting the Metros team in general as being extremely erratic and uncontrolable. If I remember correctly, Mathis wasn't the only guy flipping out. Plus the Thursday was one of the worst reffed games of the year. Why aren't you flipping out on them, or the fact that Zambrano has lost control of the team? Why? You're probably going to point out that Mathis is fiery with the nats. So what!!!!! Honestly, before Mathis stepped on that field against Mesico, we've been the hunted for our whole lives. From that moment on, Mathis changed the mentality of the team. There was a swagger now. We weren't going to absorb pressure, we were going to go and dole it out. Mathis did that. Fine, call Mathis a failure. That goal he scored in the WC though would not have been finished by any other American. If he does nothing else, he will be remembered for changing the mentality of US soccer forever. It may have been short, but I definately think that Mathis will regain the mantle of the best American player ever shortly. A player with two knee surgeries in one year has to be given some slack.
Maybe I should have called it the Empire Cup (built around history, not language), but then you'd need to include India and a few African countries. The problem with that is, the size would get too unwieldy. How about this? Automatic Qualifiers (Top 6, based on FIFA ranking): U.S.A., Ireland, South Africa, England, Australia, Canada/Scotland. Empire Cup qualifying: Canada/Scotland, New Zealand, Wales, Northern Ireland, India, Kenya... If we can name exactly 8 squads, then we could go home-and-away for the final 4 spots in the tourney. Man, I'm getting excited just thinking about it! Never gonna happen, though.
Nah, I'm basing on my guess that BenReilly will find it annoying. Don't take me seriously when I'm responding to Ben about Clint.
Grant and Steven Goff make Cunningham look like the ass kissing hack that he is. And of course any article about the US WC performance without the well deserved reverence to Clint's goal against SK. Favorite part: every part about how stupidly ignorant the English are/were about our team. Especially Linaker: Of course, that didn't keep Lineker from issuing a condescending chuckle as he read a ridiculously ignorant American wire service story on one U.S. game -- until it turned out later that he was reading a spoof written by the British newspaper The Guardian. (Lineker humbly apologized on the air the next day.) What a tool.
Dude, calm down. It's quite obvious that American players are the ones with the huge ego problems--look at Donovan's situation with Leverkusen, Mathis thinking he's the second coming of Maradona, etc. If anything our players need to have some frickin' humility. There's no guarantee that Twellman will succeed internationally at all. Until he sticks balls into the back of the net internationally, nobody knows how he'll do. Jason Kreis springs to mind as a guy who couldn't cut it internationally.
Me too. Wasn't the (yachting) America's Cup originally named after whatever country happened to have won it last and "America's" stuck because it was in the States for about 100 years? So call it (the cup for the currently nonexistant biannual comp. between US and England) the America or England Cup, depending on current ownership. Or the Atlantic Cup. Re: Arena on Taylor Twellman. It seems to me that Bruce is never very enthusiastic about any player when talking to the press. Why some people get all bunged up when he's "insulting" their fave is a mystery to me. It's not like he's singling anybody out. The Brucespeak comments on Twellman translate to pretty enthusiastic praise from somebody else. As a Tarheel, this comment detracted from my ability to enjoy the Wahl article: "North Carolina=Argentina. And not just the baby-blue uniforms. Both produced the best players of the last quarter-century (Maradona and Jordan), both have been known for maddening tactics (the Hand of God and the Four Corners), and both have failed to win titles despite enormous talent (UNC with Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison and the Argies with Gabriel Batistuta, Hernan Crespo and Juan Veron). Dook=Brazil. Bitter rivals of UNC/Argentina. Win titles all the time. Fabled home venues (Maracana and Cameron Indoor). "
thanks for saving me the effort of typing the same thing just now. my personal favorite from the article... after watching all 5 US matches as telecast in England, with English commentators: "By the time I was done, I had Brit-speak on the head. Suddenly, and without reason, I started saying words like brilliant, delightful and footballer. If I don't watch out, I might start sounding like Brad Friedel." cor blimey, mate. funny because it's true.
It's like watching Changing Rooms on BBC America. You can have a drinking game where you have to drink everytime someone says: brilliant smashing sexy wanker cheeky etc..
I just wish that soccer columns immediately preceding the MLS playoffs were about, oh, I don't know .... the MLS playoffs. Good column, but if one of your points was about British announcers dissing MLS, maybe you should be focusing your attention on what's going on in MLS as well. The column would work extremely well six weeks or so ago, or six weeks or so from now.
I can drink an awful lot (just now starting my 14th year of rugby, not counting college), but... well, let's just say that paramedics should be standing by.
As a Tarheel, this comment detracted from my ability to enjoy the Wahl article: "North Carolina=Argentina. And not just the baby-blue uniforms. Both produced the best players of the last quarter-century (Maradona and Jordan), both have been known for maddening tactics (the Hand of God and the Four Corners), and both have failed to win titles despite enormous talent (UNC with Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison and the Argies with Gabriel Batistuta, Hernan Crespo and Juan Veron). Dook=Brazil. Bitter rivals of UNC/Argentina. Win titles all the time. Fabled home venues (Maracana and Cameron Indoor). " [/B][/QUOTE] I remember when SI did a preview of the 94 Cup, they did a similar, but more detailed analogy, of countries vs. college basketball teams. A couple of my favorites: Argentina: Like Georgetown, chippy and unloved. Norway/Sweden/Denmark: The humdrum 4th and 5th place Pac-10 teams who never do anything. It also compared Cameroon to Cinderella teams like East Tennessee State.