After watching the "My Way" DVD, I remember Jack Edwards saying, "Is this how it ends?" after Poland goes up 3-0 against us. In hindsight, would it have been better for us to have put up a valiant effort and gone home after three games? Consider this. Based on progress made by US soccer in the last decade and barring injuries, the US will have its strongest squard at Germany 2006. But to many, especially those who don't follow the game, if the US doesn't surpass the level it amassed during the last WC (quarterfinalists), will their performance be considered a failure? As Americans, we're used to winning. But for the sake of the sport, perhaps being a semifinalist in Korea/Japan may have raised the bar too high for Germany. Making the final four in Germany will be very difficult. I'm open to any thoughts, counter arguments you may have. Jeremy
We were quarterfinalists. Dunno if that was a typo or you thought we were in the semifinals. We were very close, though.
I think the bar has been set just right. The American public will now hold U.S. Soccer to the standard it set in 2002 which is good. We have never had that standard set before. Setting the bar too high may have been to medal in the competition, but this way there is still realistic room for improvement and it created a large amount of interest (myself being a perfect example). I think it's better to be held accountable rather than to come in with a sense that it won't matter if we struggle.
I was gonna say "the dumbest post ever" but there have been much dumber ones. Goals should be high, we should always expect to win. If we go into a game expecting to lose, we have already lost. It is difficult to make the semi's in any World Cup, regardless of your talent and expectations. Would it have been better for the sport of soccer in the US if we would have been out after 3 games? How high were the ratings for Mexico and Germany? Would our boys have been all over the media had we gone out after Poland? Would there have been an "Our Way" dvd? Of course not, our boys would have been forgotten expect for a small few. Look at it think way, we put out played Germany in a WORLD CUP QUATERFINAL! That is where our valient effort was, and I would rather it be there than in the opening round.
Quarterfinals is a lot better than last place. Besides, I don't think the US players or fans 'expect' the same results but now have the confidence that they can 'achieve' the same results... or better.
I see where you are coming from, but I'll take our results this summer every time. First, it was just an amazing time to be a soccer fan of the US. There was some sort of appeal towards waking up at all hours of the night to watch the games. I'm sure this happened with many others, but O'Brien's goal was met with elation, and then wondering if I was still asleep Look at all the outside attention the US received back here as well. No way that happens with a 3 and out performance. Beating Mexico and outplaying Germany proved the Portugal game wasn't a fluke. And come on, when would you trade in a chance to beat Mexico? Perhaps more than anything, though, is that it validated MLS. It proved to people in the US and the World that our league is vastly improving and can turn out quality players. If we had another '98 performance, I don't think that would have reflected well on MLS. As mentioned above, I think the US players and fans are still humble; what we should expect is to take on the best in the world as opposed to merely being happy to be on the field.
Gotta agree with mellon and cpwilson. Getting to the quarters gives us a goal to shoot for in 2006, and the returning players will know what's needed to get there again. Though it was disappointing, we went out at the right time. Most importantly, we went out with our dignity intact and the respect of the world (except, of course, Mexico), which is more than can be said of many traditional soccer nations. And, as a reminder, I leave you with this...
This reminds me of a story I read once about a college basketball coach, who had just won a national championship. And one of the school's big boosters came up to him, and asked, do you think this will help recruiting? The booster, of course, had it exactly backwards. You don't win championships to help recruiting. You recruit to help win championships. You don't succeed in the World Cup for the purpose of building your program. You build your program for the purpose of succeeding in the World Cup.
During a recent drunken evening out my buddy (ojsgillt on BigSoccer) said the following: "I bet there'd be some money in making foam 'Bruce Arena Arms' like he did at the World Cup. Kinda like those foam finger things..."
Like England, the US is currently ranked about 10th in the world. If the US is still ranked at about that level in 2006 (pre-world cup) then expecting to get past the quarters could put undue pressure on the team - i.e. if they 'only' make the quarters they'll be regarded as failures. The transition from underdogs to being a team exected to win, or at least do well, can be surprisingly difficult. It could be argued that the US didn't handle being expected to qualify for the world cup all that well (even though they made it with a game or two to spare). It's quite alarming what can happen when the fear of failure creeps in. To be honest though it's hard to judge expectation until the draw is announced. Prior to the draw people in England tended to regard a quarter-final place as the OK pass mark. Once the draw was made and we had a tough group, plus the likely prospect of games vs France and then Brazil, expectations were lowered a tad. But if the US really is the 10th best team in the world then a 5th-8th place finish has to be regarded as a real achievement. By the same token, only if the US is ranked in the top 4 come 2006 can failure to make the semis be regarded as a disappointment.
You seem to have been around BS long enough that you should know a few things. One of the biggest is that FIFA rankings mean absolutely nothing. We were ranked pretty high going into France '98, look what happened. I doubt the US fans, or the England fans, set their expectations on the FIFA rankings.
If the US "only" makes it to the 2006 quarterfinals, I'd be satisfied I'm sure, unless of course the team loses to Mexico. I don't know if one good World Cup performance alone can be enough to "set the bar" for anybody, unless you win the whole damn thing. For instance, Bulgaria made it pretty far in 94, but from what I remember the expectations for them in 98 weren't as high as, say Yugoslavia, who didn't even qualify in 94. I think once the US goes through qualifying and the draw is announced, then we can make accurate predictions and decide what would be an acceptable finish. Qualifying is a monster in itself, so we need to concern ourselves with that first.
At the very least, then, our expectations should be to qualify for the World Cup. With the talent level on this team, anything else would be unacceptable.
????? It's not when are we going to win the cup. It's how many cups are we going to win? Now go back and hide under your chair.
We can have a better team and I think we will. We can play better over all (we did not play well against Korea although the officiating advantage they had was emormous and our poise was lacking against Poland). We can do all this and not make it out of the first round. Look at the quality of the teams that did not make it in 2002. Argentina, France and the Dutch did not even make it. The bar is set too high. We are not the tenth best team in the world.(FIFA)
Everybody should stop pointing to the FIFA rankings as some sort of gauge to measure team's strengths. The Czech Republic has been consistently ranked very high but were not in the 98 or 02 world cups. FIFA's system makes sense only to FIFA. To the rest of us, those rankings are absolutely ridiculous. You think Bruce Arena or any other national team coach in the world says "Hey, look at that. We're number eight."
The original point is a valid one. It is quite possible that we can head to Germany with better talent and an overall better team than we had in 2002, and actually play better to some degree, but still finish short of our 2002 result. The consequnce being that followers of the Nat team feel like no progress was made when in fact we may have made a lot of progress, but in a crucial tournament things go against us. It sort of goes back to the 1998 Cup issue. Is it fair to say that the 98 squad was less talented than say the 94 squad based on results? As France and Argentina can attest the World Cup can be a treacherous measuring stick even for powerhouse clubs. Sure setting the bar high is ordinarily a good thing to do, but if you turn on a program that may have in fact made great strides when the previous result isn't met or exceeded then you risk jumping to false conclusions about how good your team actually may be.
I think the national team should be measured on how competitive it is in World Cup qualifying and the World Cup finals, and to a lesser extent in other international tournaments (Gold Cup, Confederations Cup). England is considered one of the top teams in the world but when was the last time England played for the World Cup title? I'm not trying to say that the US compares to England in any way, nor that it will reach that level ever. But England is competitive in most tournaments it competes in. Saudi Arabia has made the last three or four World Cups but is not very competitive in them at all. England is competitive and has certain expectations. Saudi Arabia is not competitive and has certain expectations. We can't say that the US must reach the semifinals of 2006 simply because the US reached the quarterfinals in 2002. We can't expect that from our team. What if the US draws Germany in the second round? Germany at home in the World Cup? Forget it. Then, the US would go home in the round of 16, and anybody who expected semifinals or better would be disappointed. The bar is certainly rising. In 1990, US fans were just happy to be in Italy. A 1-0 loss to Italy was great. In 1994, losing to Brazil was acceptable, because the US played well. Now, the US has qualified for four consecutive World Cups (okay, 1994 doesn't count, so the US has appeared in the last four cups). Only Spain, Brazil, the US, South Korea, Cameroon, Argentina and Belgium have appeared in the last four World Cups. Let's worry about qualifying right now, since that will be more difficult this time around than last.