Great progress so far! But hold your horses. U.S. supporter ambitions far exceed the ability of the U.S National team. (same in most countries) However, until the U.S PLAYERS acquire a feverish ambition, ability and expectation to defeat the best teams of Brazil, Holland, Italy, Spain, Germany,etc. all World Cup winning talk is naive! I hope the day is coming soon when showing up, giving a good effort but finding a way to lose, to certain teams, is no longer acceptable to the U.S.! Championships have to be won. By that I mean you have to beat important teams, you have to win important games. Preferably winning most times, more than you lose or draw top teams. You have to learn how to win tournaments!!(important) The U.S. is on the front end of a good journey, rising to the top in their region of the football world. Still, US Soccer has to raise its game. Very good U.S. teams have to be able to break down superior teams by design. Further the team has to acquire the talent to adjust the flow, speed and direction of a game, at will! and/or as resistance is shaped on the field at any time during the 90 minutes. U.S. national team does not yet dictate this type of control in their competitions. The national team is knocking on the door but their most important players may not have been discovered yet.
We do all those things and we become the best team in the world. We do enough now to be a consistant threat in any tourny we play in. I think we need to show at least as well in the next world cup to make that 100% true, but we are nearly there it seems. Frankly, I was of the opinion that we HAD taken IT to the next level.
be honest with you guys, in general i'm not satisfied with our performance during the world cup except the Quarter final match, eventhough we beat Portugal but, its the foundation to move up to upper level and the 2006 WC will be a prove if we actualy succed in building that confidence we got from Korea.
its good to set your expectations even higher, but... trolling away a little there. this is a ridiculous thread. i thought all this "next level" talk was dead
well, as the thread-starter said, "U.S. supporter ambitions far exceed the ability of the U.S National team. (same in most countries)." I would guess he means we're like every other country on the planet except maybe Brazil. In other words, it's not a statement that's going to overload one's synapses with blinding insight.
Sweden has been in 2 WC semi's. More than USA or Mexico has ever done so being Sweden is not so bad!!
Re: Re: U.S. Team, Not Ready For Next Level? England? I think it's been 27 years since they beat Sweden, so the parallels should be obvious.
while much in this post may be true .... isn't it all so blatantly obvious and general that it could be applied to every freakin' team on the planet? of course, it's also been beaten like a dead horse. I fail to see the point.
Thank you. I'm gald I'm not the only one who thinks like this. The road to the WC 2002 final was there for us to take. Beat a Mexican team we had beaten 5/6 times and then beat a German team who we had beaten 2 out of the lasr 3 times. Then handle Korea in the Semi's? 3 Teams that we had beaten before to reach the Final. What more would we want? Oh well, tt's all water under the bridge now.
We've already been at the "next level" for quite some time; we are regularly in the FIFA top ten, and the WC 2002 was just icing on the cake. What we really need is a well-respected domestic league (no offense to MLS) and then we'll be "perceived" by the world to be at "the next level."