Not even your thesis of "It's baffling to hear people say that the US should have tied Brazil"? If not for two brutal Superstar calls, the US likely would have had an excellent chance to tie Brazil. And that includes the concession of an autogol (albeit pressured) and a stupid extra-time PK. Some time the grapes really ARE sour.
Frescoxl ... where'd you go?!?! http://www.oem.com.mx/esto/notas/n417381.htm Based on Hugo Sanchez' quotes, it sure looks like he was satisfied with the result. I guess you are saying that Mexico is mediocre ...
It was a very entertaining game and if not for a few bad calls/non-calls and some bad luck the result could have been different. Not much to be upset about, they played pretty well against Brazil.
The JORDAN RULE- A superstar player who gets the foul called against the opposing team, because he's well liked and respected. A great player, who may or may not get slight contact, and the foul is called, after the player complains he got fouled.
Nobody mentioned the conditions at Soldier Field. Rough field, and the sun and shadows played a big part in this game. I think it helped to make a higher scoring game, by giving both goalkeepers, and more so the defense than the offense problems. Someone complained about Howard's goalkeeping, which I thought he did well under those conditions.
Who gives a shit about the score. Yeah there was a few questionable calls/non calls but the fact remains, the US played well enough to have beaten Brazil regardless of other factors. Thats good enough for me. WIll this type of play by the US win them a world cup? Probably not but if they take this to South Africa, 1/4s and maybe even semis wouldnt be a too far fetched idea.
Some people seem to think that we are never able to compete with the top teams. THat's just not the case. We've gotten results on home soil against first-class opponents since the 90s. SHoot, we drew the World Champions at the World Cup one year ago. I don't understand why just not getting killed is a new measure of success.
First off this game was a friendly. It wasn't a game where we had to have a result. Sure the fans want to see a win, but to the coach and players, it's more important that they figure out a system, and figure out who can play with top teams, and to flat out play well. We accomplished a lot in that game, but it just didn't show on the scoreboard. If this game was in a tournament, we would have most likely played more defensively, and try to get a 1-0 win, but most likely would have lossed 1-0, or maybe get lucky and tie 1-1 or 0-0. The scoreboard lies sometimes and statistics do the same. Take for instance the 2002 WC game against Germany. That's probably the greatest game that I've seen the USMNT play in a loss. Really it was probably the send off game just before 2002 WC against Holland in which we losed 2-0, but nobody probably remembers that game. We had so many good scoring chances in that game, and yet we losed 2-0. Or how about comparing the 4-2 loss against Brazil, with either the 4-2 or 4-1 in friendlys against Germany. We were completely dominated in those games. Or how about when we lossed to Brazil in the 94WC by a score of 1-0. The score could have been easily 4-0. And did we play our best game against Brazil when we beat them 1-0. The answer is no. I've seen us play Brazil so many times, and that last game was one of our best. IMO the best game we played is when we lossed 1-0 in the Confed Cup (not the last one) in Mexico. My point is the score doesn't always tell the story, and is this game, we played better than the score indicates. Just tonight, my USC Trojans whipped Nebraska, but the final score was much closer because USC played prevent defense in the end because they were already up by 32 points. Nebraska got to late TD's when nobody cared to make the score close (49-31). Anyway, that's my two cents.