Boilerdowd can mock soccer and other sports his ADD doesn't allow him to focus on (and yet he watches auto racing and golf, two short-duration sports to be sure), but the fact is yesterday's victory by Team USA over Spain was huge. Or yoooge, if you're Donald Trump.
I'm not going to pretend I'm a "true" soccer fan, but I played the game from childhood through high school and I loved it. It was my primary sport. Watching it, I admit, is not the same. But none of you watch swimming regularly and yet when Team USA is going for a medley relay gold medal at the Olympics, foot traffic in Times Square would stop to watch it as though we all are the biggest swimming aficionados ever.
Basically, minimizing Team USA's win yesterday makes Boilerdowd less of an American. Or basically a communist. A dirty, dirty communist.
Okay, but seriously, the win was gigantic, as it gives the U.S. a few ounces of much-needed respect. We have more kids playing the game than any country in the world -- and yet our national teams can never seem to get anywhere. We invented baseball, basketball and American football... we hold our own in golf at events like the Ryder Cup, and our national hockey team has taken down the Russians and Canadians at times. So what's the deal with soccer?
It remains a mystery, but the fact is the U.S. men's team should be taken seriously now. Sure, they're not going to win the World Cup next year. But at least now there will be talk about how this was the squad that took down the mighty Spaniards, a national team that had not lost since the fall of 2006. That's almost three years, friends. And with one more win, they are actually the champions of something.
That's significant, whether you like soccer or not.
