To begin with a personal note, how friggin' awesome was it to see a shirtless Frankie Hejduk walking onto the stage to give Sepp Blatter and other FIFA luminaries a naked, sweaty hug? He looked like a thinner David Lee Roth up there...and with hair; it was so quintessentially American.
To start with the best review I read, I'd have to give the honors to Mark Ziegler's report for the San Diego Union-Tribune. It didn't have the bits I'm lifting from the items below, but I thought he got to all the good stuff and in style. It's a personal thing...
And, speaking of good stuff, Pitchinvasion.net posted some great photos from the occasion...good to know they'll catch just about anything out of Chicago on that site.
Getting back to Hejduk, though, he threw out a good quote in the Houston Chronicle's drama-drenched write-up:
""We had 23 players standing around the cup in a circle. And everyone who wanted to see us lose were outside. We had all those thousands of people trying to get into there, doing everything they could to take the cup away from us in our own country. And we defended them all. We held them all off. The beer always tastes a little better when you do that."
Good to know beer motivates him as well...
Speaking of player quotes, it's been fun seeing multiple examples of how seriously our players take this rivalry. When asked about missing the sitter Landon Donovan provided him to ice the game, DaMarcus Beasley provided the following to the Washington Post's Steve Goff:
"If [Tim Howard] hadn't made that save, it would've been on me and I would've cried."
Another noteworthy thing to have come out of this game may (or may not) be the growing respect for the U.S. team among Mexico's players. For instance, ine can find word that Carlos Salcido swapped jerseys with Donovan - or that he shook his hand at the very least; I read somewhere (can't recall where) that Mexican 'keeper, Oswaldo Sanchez, had good things to say after the game. With the sometimes ugly commenst that followed some of our wins I looked pretty hard for any disparaging words out of the Mexican camp and, happily, the worst I found appeared in the report behind the link in this paragraph in the form of a quote from Mexico's coach, Hugo Sanchesz. Here's that:
" "I want the team that played the best to win," Mexican manager Hugo Sanchez said. "I don't want a team to win on the ref's call."
That sounds pretty sniveling - and maybe it is - but a fuller version of the same quote (from the Boston Globe's report) makes the whole thing read better:
"We were hoping the US would score on a brilliant play, plus there was one [penalty] on Omar Bravo. I would prefer that whoever wins is the better team and not the team that wins on a referee's call. Sometimes the best team doesn't win. But the US was maybe more practical and they deserved it."
On a number of levels, then, it's a little tempting to hope a corner has been turned.
On the personal level, a couple people walk away from this tournament with a bit of shine on their reputations. For instance, Bob Bradley's decision to replace Pablo Mastroeni with Ricardo Clark has drawn wide praise, up to a straight statement that this proved him most qualified for the job. Whatever you think of that particular asssertion, it's safe to say Bradley didn't hurt himsefl in the Gold Cup. And, to file under "numbers don't lie," who'd a thought Landon Donovan would tie two records in the 2007 Gold Cup? We all knew about his tying Eric Wynalda's all-time scoring record, on the way, no doubt, to setting a tough-to-top mark down the road. But how many out there knew Donovan also tied the record for Gold Cup goals? When he scored yesterday, he netted his 12th in Gold Cup play, tying Mexico's Luis Roberto "Zague" Alves.
While that's all to the good, I'll close here with some sobering points. Keeping with "the personal," it seems that a few people see this year's Gold Cup as the end of the road for Pablo Mastroeni - or at least that applies to a few people who responded to questions left by Luis Arroyanve on his Red Card blog. Writing as just about the only Mastroeni fan left on the planet, it pains me a little to acknowledge this is correct: the reality is, he's slowing down, or, no less accurately, he's being overtaken by younger players who have the incalcuable upside of being a lot younger when 2010 rolls around. He deserves a send-off, but, unquestionably, it's time to groom new people.
Finally, turning to another part of the team, as Ives Galarcep pointed out today, a basically improved performance yesterday aside, the reality is our defense still needs to improve. That can happen by improved cohesion and coordination or changes in personnel, but there's no question it needs to happen.
Ah well. It has been a fun couple weeks. It has had some very real highs and some bruising lows, but, given the happy ending, it would be churlish to call the 2007 Gold Cup anything but a good time for U.S. Soccer.
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