End of Line for US

Just some brief comments on the US' ride in the World Cup...

They played very well today against Germany by showing a composure on the ball and ability to run their opponents ragged that I don't think I've ever seen before from an American squad. The fallout from their performance over the last few weeks should be interesting to see. Me thinks that American interest in the sport will wane as quickly as it grew, unfortunately. It's up to the people at MLS to try to capitalize on this momentum.

Some people at work were saying, "well, at least they have next year." *Sigh* I guess we need to start somewhere, right?

Check out some comments from Marc Connolly and Tommy Smyth.

As for US players, Claudio Reyna was amazing today. Tony Sanneh played out of his skin the whole tournament. Landon Donovan basically proved that he can play anywhere (will he go back to Leverkusen?). A whole host of other players - DaMarcus Beasley, Brian McBride, and John O'Brien, especially - saw their stock fly though the roof with solid and, at times, gamebreaking performances. Mathis did not do well in the Cup, although I still think he can garner interest from Europe (not Bayern, anymore; maybe Perugia - to take Ahn's place?). This Cup should, hopefully, encourage him to put a little more emphasis on his fitness and training, something Arena has been very critical of.

Overall, the US performance has been delightful to watch. I hardly expected to see an American squad perform at this level so quickly; I figured I wouldn't see this till at least 2006. I'm not going to ring in with any bloated predictions or the lame "we've finally made it on the world stage" rhetoric, but this has been a very promising development for football (ahem, soccer) in this country. At the least, it kept baseball out of the spotlight for a few weeks...which is always a good thing. ;)