During international soccer tournaments, we all become prisoners of the moment.
Unlike club play, there isn’t a full season to sift through. Teams are promised only a few group matches. If they’re lucky, they get a knockout match or two. Every game is massive. Every result gets blown out of proportion.
With so much riding on each game, media and fans often delve into the extreme. Bad results lead to excessive handwringing. Solid wins prompt premature celebrations.
The US national team have experienced both sides of that spectrum in their first two Copa America Centenario matches.
First was the 2-0 loss to Colombia last Friday. I don’t think the US played as well as Jurgen Klinsmann said they did, but I don’t think they were all that bad, either. How they played didn’t matter, though. A loss under Jurgen is a loss under Jurgen, and the sky, predictably, fell out.
US Soccer president Sunil Gulati said some things about the German manager’s job security. A decent percentage of fans – insanely, in my opinion – said they’d take a loss on Tuesday against Costa Rica and the Copa elimination that would go with it if the defeat meant Klinsmann would be fired.
That defeat, of course, didn’t come. The USMNT were fun again against Costa Rica, rolling to a 4-0 win to put themselves back in the driver’s seat to advance out of Group A. The result naturally prompted positive reactions all across the US soccer universe. The general tone, from what I saw, approached celebratory. The popular take was that the USMNT survived what approximated an elimination game and, with Paraguay on deck, should make it through to the quarters.
And they should. Paraguay are feisty, but the US have more talent and will be playing in front of what should be a huge, all-US crowd in Philadelphia on Saturday (7:30 pm ET; FS1, Univision and UDN). A win would secure a spot in the quarterfinals. A draw would even do the trick as long as Costa Rica doesn’t beat Colombia by a wide margin.
That’s not my point, however. It’s easy and entertaining to ride the wave – maybe that’s the essence of being a fan, even – but it’s a little bit silly, too.
As Klinsmann noted in his postgame press conference on Tuesday, if you would have told a USMNT fan a few months ago that the US would lose to Colombia, they would’ve probably thought that sounded about right. If you would’ve told that same fan that the US would follow a defeat to Los Cafeteros with a win against Costa Rica, you probably would’ve been met with more agreement.
The loss made sense. The win did, too. And, just like we shouldn’t have lost our minds after a defeat to the No. 3 team in the world, we shouldn’t get too crazy about a home win against a CONCACAF foe not named Mexico. After all, Tuesday’s win won’t mean anything if the US fall against Paraguay this weekend.
So hold your judgment until around 10 pm ET on Saturday night. If the US come up short in Philly, go ahead and bring out the pitchforks. If they make it through, we’ll talk again after the quarters.
