There was one aspect of yesterdays game versus the Czech Republic that I didn’t see, and that was passion. The players didn’t seem to have a passion to play today.
As Americans, we are a very proud country. Remember Lake Placid…1980, U.S. v. Soviet Union. The Miracle. Of course.
American teams (expect basketball) seem to fight until the end. We always show our fighting spirit in the Olympics. Whatever the sport, we seem to have a good showing.
And then we have the underdogs, like Sasha Cohen, the 1980 Mens hockey team, etc…
But, for some reason, that spirit doesn’t pass to soccer. And it didn’t seem like our soccer team had that ‘do or die American Spirit.’
This seems to be the only national team in the U.S. that really doesn’t play for ‘America’. I think that is because the American media and public undermind our chances to win. And when we have a display like we did yesterday, that just confirms their fears that we aren’t as good as the FIFA rankings make us.
It seems that our team isn’t playing for anything. They seem to have no drive. I think that the U.S. Soccer Federation really needs to get a PR machine going to make people ‘proud’ of their team. They also need to make their players feel ‘proud’ to play for us as well.
