Told ya. I told you we could kick Italy's ass if we played our game; if we played like we had nothing to lose (which we didn't). We absolutely dominated the first twenty minutes. We tackled hard, ran at defenders, won every ball, and were every measure the better team. In the south end, our fans were noticeably louder than for the first game, and it really felt like we were carrying our boys forward. Then, suddenly, a fluke goal compeltely against the run of play.

And it should have been over, but... it wasn't. There was no change in momentum. There was no change in pressure. There was no change in heart, or hussle, or voice in the south end, but there was a change in the scoreboard. It may have been an own goal, but it was fully deserved and a product of the constant pressure created by the US eleven (twelve if you count the 15,000 of us screaming away).

And then, the ref. If memory serves, there had been one straight red and maybe three double yellows in the tournament, and then the new Peter Pendergrast starts handing them out like they are solicitations for drugs in central Europe (but thats anotehr story.) He put us down to nine men on two terrible calls, and put Italy down to ten on a debatable call. And yet STILL, even down to NINE MEN, we STILL took the attack to them. Unless I was hallucinating, I saw f'n GOOCH working a give and go in the Italian box while we had NINE MEN.

I'm so proud of our boys. I wish I had words. It was one of the great performances in US history, right there with 1-0 in 1950, 2-0 in Jeonju, and 0-1 against Germany last time. I have to go now, tour of the Old Castle in Prague (I love non-zy/yz Czech keyboards by the way) but I'll have more and more pics ASAP.
posted by Scott @ 6/19/2006 10:25:00 AM || 3 comments