The Gold Cup is Golden (Pt. 2)

I make a conscious effort not to write about the same sport, to say nothing of the same event, for two consecutive columns. I don't want to become a one-note whistle and I don't want to bore or alienate the segments of my readers who don't care about that sport.

But as I'm sure the title tipped you off, I'm breaking that rule this time around.

I've written quite a few soccer columns for Slant Pattern now, and I always take the same angle: I'm an American neophyte giving this sport a chance, I'm liking it, and I think you should give it a chance, too.

But what I've come to understand over time is that, rather than finding a fairly cool sport to watch and write about during the summer months, my feelings for soccer steadily change each month.

What I mean to say is, my earlier enthusiastic endorsements pale in comparison to how I feel about soccer now. Quite simply, I love it. I love it more than I did before the Gold Cup, which is more than I loved it six months ago, which was more than I loved it (if I can even be said to have loved it) a year ago. I'm still growing in the game, but honestly, it has surpassed all but college football in my sports consciousness. I understand more and more after each game, and by reading more and talking about it more. I'm no soccer professor, but I can no longer call myself a neophyte.

Whereas hearing Americans casually bash soccer never fazed me before, it has awakened the snob in me now, and it strikes me as silly, ignorant, and limiting, like only every eating at 2-3 restaurants and avoiding the most popular restaurant in the city.

If you read my last column, and it didn't prompt you to watch the Gold Cup playoffs, then you really missed something. Taking off where my last column left off...

Mexico did beat Panama, and results in other games pushed them up to second in the group and away from the American side of the knockout grid. But Mexico's win over Panama wasn't convincing, and they needed a 30-minute extra time period to put away Costa Rica in the quarterfinals.

The scrappy underdogs Guadeloupe, not even autonomous enough to be eligible for the World Cup, emphatically kept the dream alive by holding off a blazing Honduras in their quarterfinal match.

I was looking forward to laying some coin on Guatemala to beat Canada. I thought Canada had benefited from a weak group, and I waxed poetic about Guatemala's success against a strong U.S. Team last column. But I overslept, missed the first 10 minutes of the game, and missed any opportunity to place my bet. Good thing, too, since Canada wasted the Guates 3-0 and announced they were For Real.

In the last column, I mentioned that the U.S. improved in each game in the group stage, but this was not the case in the knockout stage. Their quarterfinal match had Panama score the first goal against the Yankees in the tournament, but the U.S. hung on, 2-1.

In the semifinals, Guadeloupe did indeed manage to keep it respectable against Mexico, but the dream ended there like you would expect. The final score was just 1-0. For all of Mexico's problems throughout the whole tournament, the were still headed for the finals.

Though the Americans took a 2-0 lead into half-time, Canada looked an equal, if not better, team throughout. In the second half, they cut the led in half. In the 86th minute, Michael Bradley, the U.S. 19-year-old phenom and coach's son, earned a red card and the U.S. found themselves a man down. This set up the tournament's marquee controversy in the very final moments of injury time: Canada scored, the ref waved it off based on an offside flag, and the U.S. hung on. Replays shows the Canadian striker was onside. Had it counted, they would have played a 30-minute overtime period where Canada would have all the momentum and, more importantly, a one-man advantage.

Canada instantly became tournament martyrs, with even the American press conceding that they wuz robbed. But (...and I seem to be alone here, but it's true) they weren't.

Four minutes of injury time were declared, and the waved-off call came just after the four minute mark. Why was that much stoppage time declared?

There is no reason. There were no goal celebrations (when Canada scored, they rushed the ball back to the center line to give themselves as much time as possible to tie). There were no injuries to speak of. There was the red card and five substitutions, but two of those substitutions happened simultaneously, and a third happened simultaneously with the red card. The U.S. did very little dead ball time wasting. By my estimate, about two and a half minutes would've been right, three would have been acceptable.

In the Final three days later, four minutes of extra time was also given, and that was after a second half featuring a penalty kick, two goal celebrations, and a gruesome, time-consuming injury when two players knocked heads ... and the ref whistled game over right at the stroke of four minutes. It made accusations that the ref blew the call against the Canadians purposefully to help the Americans hard to tolerate.

So, the U.S. and Mexico would meet in the final after all. While Mexico looked shaky all tournament, they were still Mexico, and if the U.S. looked better each game in the group stage, they looked worse each game in the knockout stage.

The final was a blur. Mexico broke a 789-minute scoreless streak against the Americans on U.S. soil in the first half and took a 1-0 lead in the locker room. Not long after half-time, however, the Americans equalized on a penalty kick. 1-1.

My growing passion for soccer was assisted greatly by having a team to care about. I cut my teeth on Portsmouth in the English Premier League, and I still love 'em. But at the end of the day, my team is the United States Men's National Team. They represent me, and they aren't supposed to either boringly dominate or complacently flame out like they do in basketball.

I couldn't watch the rest of the second half sitting down. I paced like a lion in the cage. And then >this happened and I ran, I ran so far away. I ran all around the house, shouting, emoting, reacting. It was simply glorious.

Mexico didn't answer. The United States, the team representing most of those reading this, are champions of the confederation. They won each knockout game 2-1. For the first time, a team ran the table in the Gold Cup without even being forced to play an extra stanza, and now the United States is 10-0-1 in their last 11 games. You should have watched.

That said ... I'm not going to write about soccer next time.