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Ok, seriously guys, what is happening with the world? The United States was not supposed to be this good, this quickly. Jurgen Klinsmann wasn’t supposed to be finding kids practically off the street — or Straße, in this case — and turn them into world beaters. We shouldn’t have been up 2-1 at any point against Portugal in the World Cup. We shouldn’t have pulled off that ridiculous comeback against the Dutch last Friday. And we definitely, definitely shouldn’t have followed up that comeback with a win against Germany.
But you know what? We are. He has. We did. And we absolutely f***ing did. And that win over Germany? It was the first ever for the United States on German soil.
Don’t listen to what the haters will say about the USMNT’s back-to-back victories over the Dutch and the Germans. These wins are a big deal. No one thought that the USMNT could beat these two teams, friendly or no friendly. Yet that is exactly what it has done, and it did it in exactly the way that Jugen Klinsmann envisioned this team winning when he took over the team back in 2011.
The United States played like a team that knows it can win after Diskerud put that goal away. It possessed the ball with confidence. Michael Bradley had one of the best games of his career. DeAndre Yedlin was playing like the pacey offensive threat we all knew he could be from the full back position. Gyasi Zardes was holding up play like a boss. The US even scared the best goal of the entire match to win the game!
It was so good that it made absolutely everyone watching forget about, oh, I don’t know, the other brilliant goal scored by the United States.
Take a bow, Diskerud. You deserve it. The entire team does.
This may have been Germany’s B team, but it was a B-team that the United States beat, and not the other way around. There was no talk of “against he run of play,” or “well, Germany had the better of the game.” Don’t believe it? Just ask Schweinstieger.
There. That face right there. That is how convincing the United States were against a Germany that fielded Mesut Ozil, Mario Gotze, Andre Schurrle, and Sami Khedira. It was so gloriously unexpected, just like the hero of the week: Bobby Wood.
It is OK to cheer for Bobby Wood, to praise him like the second coming of Christ, even if though you had absolutely no idea who he was last week. This is America, where we don’t care about a sport for years, and then we go and initiate the biggest crack down against corruption in its history. We have a reputation to uphold, a cocky, gloating reputation that is half earned and half thrust upon us by a world that is caught between indignation and balling their eyes out.
And let them hate. We would to, because Bobby Wood, a 22-year-old from Hawaii known only to hardcore USMNT fans, just turned into a folk hero. It’s so American you want to drop the A, pop Air Bud: World Pup into your minivan's DVD player, and smother yourself in Kraft Singles.
Photo: imgbuddy
My God…it’s beautiful.
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