I Love The World Cup

 This particular version, while hugely problematic due to its occurring in Qatar for a myriad of reasons including the government's penchant for hateful intolerance, human rights problems, the despicable corruption that led to a tiny but wealthy nation with virtually no soccer culture being chosen by FIFA to host the World Cup despite the lack of infrastructure and proper climate to host a summer-time tournament, has had an awful lot of really brilliant soccer (albeit, a lot of my favorite brand which is underdog and upset soccer).

I am delighted that the host nation lost all three of their matches, and were embarrassingly and appropriately dispatched from the tournament before any other team, and we now sit an hour before the kick-off of the US Men's National Team final group stage match against Iran.  It's a simple proposition for the US - we win and we move on to the knock-out stage tournament of the top 16 teams.  We are ranked higher and truly are better than Iran's team, and we haven't won a match yet (just 2 draws), so if you can't win at least one of your group stage matches, then really, you don't deserve to move on.

I've got high hopes, and although it now looks like we'd most likely be matched up against the Netherlands in our Round of 16 Match (unless Wales win their match against England that kicks off at the same time or we win by more than 4 goals today and England - Wales ends in a draw), the Dutch have seemed a bit beatable this tournament so it wouldn't necessarily be the death sentence it might have been in other years for us.

To enhance the tournament, I've been listening to After The Whistle, a World Cup podcast with Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard from Ted Lasso) and Rebecca Lowe (an NBC Premier League commentator).  The two make a superb pairing with a British expat who talks about football professionally, but is an unabashed partisan for England on this show and an American fake soccer coach who used to live in and learned to love soccer in The Netherlands and is rooting for "The Guys" (his term for USMNT) and has a side thing for the Dutch.  It's a good listen...

But for now, it's all about this match this afternoon, and getting through.  I'm not usually a rah-rah fan for the US teams in Olympic or other competitions, but at the World Cup, because we are Underdogs, but I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN (is that still a chant that we do??)