Well that sucked.
Before the tournament started, the U.S. men’s national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann said that to win the World Cup, his players would need to play the game of their lives for seven games. But that was before the Revenge against Ghana, the Game That Portugal Stole and the Greatest Loss Ever. We had escaped the group stage and were in the round of 16. It started to seem that our talent was actually keeping pace with our belief.
Which made Tuesday’s game between the Belgians and the USA easily one of the most painful sports viewings I’ve probably ever experienced. Each Belgian shot on goal felt like another knife, a dose of reality, cutting and twisting deeper into the back of the hopeful Americans who thought they had arrived.
But for a while, you thought Tim Howard might just be enough to stop the bleeding. His work in the goal was surgical, steady and precise, his body positioning exact. Contrast that with the American defense, which held Belgium scoreless but appeared overwhelmed and manic. Still, I couldn’t help but think as the clock ticked toward that 90-minute mark, “If we can just get one goal.”
To say that Kevin De Bruyne’s goal in the 93rd minute was surprising would be a lie. It looked like Belgium was playing with 12 men. Yet as long as that score remained 1-0, the chant rang true: I believe.
Then Romelu Lukaku happened. Instead of just twisting the knife, the Belgian striker took a bat to our knees, and put his team up 2-0. The eulogies began.
Now, there’s a tendency to over-narrate competitions like this. We like to piece together trends, personify teams and draw grand conclusions from a globally spectated game. The teams are supposed to embody the country: The Brazilians are quick and stylish, the Germans are brutal and efficient, the Americans are gritty and tough.
As much as I’d like to believe being born in and growing up between the 49th and 28th parallels gives us some kind of inherent, uniquely American qualities, I don’t know how much I buy that. That kind of thinking tends to overgeneralize things.
Yet soccer seems to have a way of making the complex simple. Julian Green’s volley in the 107th minute to cut the deficit to one, and the ensuing, almost heroic, effort by a seemingly defeated USMNT to claw its way back into the game trumped any kind of academic thought on the matter. We’re Americans, I thought. Impossible is what we do.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. The Belgians advanced, and the American fever was broken.
Yet in the debris of the team’s failed attempt, a couple of interesting ideas have emerged. We usually hold these truths to be self-evident: Americans are simultaneously the ultimate underdog and the best at everything. We’ve never gotten over that whole Revolutionary War thing.
Which is part of the allure of the World Cup. This narrative of the perpetual underdog persists, however paradoxically, in our national DNA. Soccer is the last thing we can truly, actually, say we’re underdogs in (except for maybe, like, curling or something).
But if we’ve shown anything this World Cup, it’s that we fit the role comfortably. We showed up to Brazil in droves, tuned in by the millions for every game. Clint Dempsey broke his nose and kept playing.
It’s sad to see it come to an end. I wish it could’ve been a grander ending for the the likes of Dempsey and Howard, who may have very well played in their last World Cup.
Despite this, younger players like Green and DeAndre Yedlin have proven it will be an easy transition. In four years, Americans may have to adjust to a new role: contenders.