One Final Word

To my guys of the U.S. Soccer team:

Clearly (as much as it pains me to say this) you are not as good as I was hoping. That said I can see a lot of promise in you. Sure we need a starting forward who can score points for us and sometimes our defense fell apart. However, many of you are quite young and should be playing at your prime in four years (and though the World Cup hasn't even concluded, I can hardly wait). You played with grit and, if for no other reason, I love and respect you for it. You represented our country well (and from the looks of it gained a whole lot of new fans--which is just about as much a victory for U.S. soccer as moving forward in the World Cup would have been for you). Welcome home.

As an aside:

I was entirely gutted when they lost. As in I was nearly in tears. And while I do enjoy my sports, the defeats that my teams experience do not normally drive me to depression and tears--or nearly so. This was a whole new experience for me. I think some of it was because I knew some of these guys had just played their last game on the U.S. national team--and were quite emotional about it themselves--but I think a part of the reason is that soccer has risen to a whole new level of appreciation in my life. Previous to the World Cup, soccer was rating a close second to baseball. Now, though, I'm just about ready to move it up ahead (I think I'll give it another month to see if there is a let down from watching my national team to watching my club teams though).

As another aside:

Since the game I can hardly stop thinking about whether their loss was my fault. I wore a skirt that day. Maybe that was bad luck. (I wore a skirt Sunday as well when Germany crushed England so I'm thinking it was definitely bad luck) I only wore one ring that day as opposed to the two I had worn all the previous games. Maybe I should have changed during halftime like I did to ensure a better conclusion to one of their earlier matches. See what baseball has done to me (baseball players and many fans are a very superstitious bunch). Just for that baseball should probably be relegated down.