Busy, busy sports weekend, but first, rest in peace to Michael Jackson. For all his legal issues and perceivably strange quirks, at one time the dude truly reigned as the king of pop, and listening to his music over the weekend made me remember how his songs influenced almost every stage of my life. Back to our busy sports weekend though, which included the culmination of MLB inter-league play, the middle rounds of Wimbledon (tennis has some blazin’ stars, sorry), and the one topic that needs discussin’ – the Confederations Cup finals.
As previewed in Friday’s blog, the U.S. Men’s National Team played Brazil over the weekend in the FIFA Confederations Cup championship game. Easily the biggest men’s American-involved soccer match in our lifetime (or for anyone under the age of 70), the FCC provided the Estados Unidos with the chance to finally make “the leap” and join the upper echelon teams in international futbol. The U.S. jumped out to a 2-0 first half lead, but the Brazilians fired in three goals in the final 45-minutes en route to a 3-2 win.
Despite the runner-up finish, a lot of people keep calling the Confederations Cup a success for U.S. Men’s Soccer…I disagree. Yes, the United States came into the game as pretty massive underdogs. Yes, they shocked everyone by going ahead by two goals. But did they win the game? No, and how many times do fans need to hear about U.S. soccer being ready to "take the next step" and how many times do we have to then see them fall short? The Confederations Cup was encouraging (especially the wins over Egypt and Spain), but let’s slow our roll with the success talk until the U.S. starts taking home some hardware. In fact, U.S. mid-fielder Landon Donovan summed up the FCC best:
“We’re at the point where we don’t want respect, we want to win.”
Exactly, and judging from the faces of the other U.S. players after the game, none of them considered the FCC a success either. These guys know that second-place (no matter how encouraging) still means second-place. That being said, our guys do deserve a ton of credit for playing hard, never giving up (the Egypt game), and finally going cleat-to-cleat with the big guns (the Spain game/the first half against Brazil).
So let’s be realistic about the FIFA Confederations Cup by saying the following: exciting championship game, congrats to the Samba Kings, and good run for Team USA. Now our boys need to build on the FCC experience, and strive for something even more elusive than the Confederations Cup – a real success story.
For anyone who missed Sunday’s match, check out these highlights from the game:
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