I still can't believe in 07 we beat Uruguay who had Suarez and Cavani but I guess that team was pretty good.
For those of you whippersnappers, Michael Bradley had hair! That team did some pretty incredible things and they've got to rank as one of the best team YNT performances of the MLS era. (Way off-topic, but I'll always leave a light on for that 2008 Olympic team that didn't advance...) Watch that Brazil game again sometime and just marvel at some of the stuff they were doing in terms of team movement by U.S standards, as well of course as Freddy's oozing confidence. The Austria match was a heartbreaker. The roster looks somewhat unremarkable with 10 years of hindsight, but so do a lot of things. They played well as a group and a lot of guys who went on to do relatively little played important roles. (I'm sure the semi-home-field-advantage helped too.) Szetela, of course, looked like a future star, and Sal Zizzo was one of those guys it was just a delight to watch run. Then there's The Ballad of Brian Arguez...
I was at all of the U.S. games in Canada. That was just a good U-20 team. Even though none of the players on the backline made it to the full national team, they played well together as a unit. The whole team played well and Michael Bradley was a beast.
Heartbreaker of a tournament, kind of metaphorically felt like the shift of momentum and excitement of the tournament was analogous to the shift of momentum in the closing seconds of regulation against Argentina in the '03 tournament. From supreme confidence, and sheer joy to heartbroken disbelief. It's funny that it was brought up because last night I dug through Szetela clips on youtube against S. Korea and Poland wondering why things didn't work out for him. He seemed so confident, always in the right place and so key early in that tourney. My feelings during that tourney were basically: Good lord we are lucky as hell we're not getting stomped by S. Korea, omg, this is the game where everything goes right (against Poland), then OMG, Adu, Altidore, Bradley, Szetela etc, maybe Project 2010 (or whatever it was called) didn't have insane and absurd expectations (against Brazil), followed by that knockout drag out, all heart win over Uruguay. I was so thrilled we had Austria coming our way, then of course, we got the news that our goalie was hurt, and boy did it show. He'd had such a fantastic tournament, and it was obvious he wasn't himself for that game. Real soft goal let in, and just a brutal, heartbreaking, inexplicable defeat after the results in our first four games. The ultimate reminder that when teens are playing, nothing is preordained, especially freaking bad weather, and if I remember right goalie injuries.
Just watched @Dave Marino-Nachison 's Uruguay highlights - happily extended to show the post-match shouting/shoving, with MB repeating (for emphasis) 2-1 - the final score. Your memory mostly concords with mine, except that Seitz was so badly injured that back-up Perk played v Uruguay. Perk 'spilled' the ball on the Uruguay goal, so Rongen (not yet Wrongen) plugged Seitz back in v Austria - a pretty obvious mistake. If you look at the end of the Uruguay match highlights, the post-game (4:40), you will see that Seitz - not dressed to play, not even the back-up that day - can barely walk. [I assume the limping player we see from the back is Seitz - he's enormous, by comparison). If memory serves, Seitz could not take goal kicks v Austria - certainly his mobility was severely limited. Great team to watch, though, and that team's beating Brazil remains one of my all-time YNT-moments.