What the Hell Are You So Happy About?

WOO! LANDY! Hey, no disrespect with the name. I'm not calling you, "Mandon" lest you sound like a gay porn star. You've definitely graduated from "Landycakes," although I may throw that one in affectionately every now-and-then. And not so affectionately if you come to D.C. in a Galaxy uniform. If the Germans can call Schweinsteiger, "Schweini," you can be "Landy."

Okay, I am euphoria-ed out. No, really, I was happy yesterday, giddy even. The result is fantastic, 1st in the group ahead of England with a chance for revenge against Ghana, who knocked us out of the tournament in Germany (Honestly, we lost that game more than Ghana "won" it). Moreover, the U.S., under a lot of pressure and giant spotlight, came through. I suppose the "end" justifies the "means," since there are no points for style and sports are results-based in the end. I just don't think the "means" that the U.S. has shown will get them as far as they can go.

Here's the crux of it: I think the U.S. still choked a good bit. That England game should have been a loss, if not for a goal-keeping error. Holding England 1-0 still wouldn't have been bad, except that England barely made it out of the group (that Slovenian keeper is awful at close range shots - I know he's "highly-rated," but I think a good keeper (Howard) saves both Donovan's and Defoe's strikes). England played really, really poorly. Not as poorly as, say, France or Italy (laughter ensues), but poorly enough. Maybe England is ranked too highly in general, but they should have been able to defeat Algeria and probably should have handled Slovenia more easily. Gave up an early goal against England, TWO first half goals to Slovenia (Algeria held them to one), and took until 90+ to score on Algeria. Sure, Algeria had a decent defense, but how many chances did the U.S. miss? We were fortunate that this tournament is crazy and that we had a weak group. I predicted that we wouldn't make it out of the group, true. I'm glad I was wrong. However, I don't believe that the U.S. can continue as it has. It has to show the team we saw at the end of the Confederations Cup. Make no mistake - we have not seen that team yet. We've seen the team the won the group in qualifying, but this has been far from the U.S. at their best.

Drawing England with a soft goal, coming back to draw Slovenia, squeaking out a win against Algeria - it's good that the U.S. got results while playing somewhere between good and mediocre. But they did so against weak teams, that's hardly convincing that we're ready for the big kids on the block. . Maybe Ghana will bring it out of them. However, that is another game that, by most analysis, the U.S. should win. I hope for a win. More than that, I hope for something to give me hope for an upset when we play a team that should be better than us.