Football ("soccer") is a sign of U.S.A.’s moral decay

30 mn extra time, then penalty kicks if equality.

yeah.. that performance by Mexican goalie..Ochoa...there's a freakishly good goalie. Mexico was jobbed!

All over but the crying now.

Congrats to Belgium. Mighty good . Good luck against Germany (right?).

{Edit..Ooops, they play Argentina}

Well played, US... :-) Amazing ending but not enough...

A close-up of Wondolowski:

Both deserved to get in the next round

er, the 16...

(always looking ahead, eh)

Not exactly. 39 to 17 shots on goal, and for most of the match the number was even worse. That is no way to win.

Tim Howard made 16 saves today - the most by a goalkeeper in a single match in World Cup history

Yes but... Belgium deserved it more I guess. I mean, they've been dominating the regular time through and through without any score...

Just because you're out doesn't mean the World Cup's over, we were knocked out last week. Transfer your allegiance to someone else. You might fancy one of the other American sides like erstwhile minnows Costa Rica.

On a personal level I'm supporting Holland, but on a Club level I'm supporting France, as Morgan Schneiderlin is the last Saint standing.

I am amazed that a tiny country like Belgium can so dominate the match with the team from a colossus like the USA.

It's not the total population that matters, it's the football playing population, i.e. the pool of talent to draw from, + the 'infrastructure' (the quality of the clubs, of the coaches, etc.).

You are obviously correct. But I am just stunned by the total domination.

You don't understand me - I've followed every match (well, a couple I read the play by plays the next morning) and have no intention of not watching further. Also, I think so far my favorite team re rooting was Mexico, and I've liked Costa Rica and Chile and France and Algeria. I was glad the US got this far. I'm not known to myself to be much of a local fan for any sport. Am sometimes, but that's not a given. This time I was hoping during the match that the US would win, but I'll live.

It's a feeling you get used to.

You are over-simplifying the comparison. In order to compare the 2 countries sports environments, and compare apples with apples, you should not compare the population of countries...but actual soccer-playing populations. Also the length of time the sport has had to mature with international competition.

Considering the length of time US has taken soccer seriously at an International level and has had a strong coach (like Klinsmann), it hasn't been that long. US is now making good progress, but should be considered in it's teen-age years.

In US, soccer competes for a pool of possible talented athletes who are diverted elsewhere. Sports to which they might gravitate is enormous. In Belgium, an athlete who is looking to the top tier of competition and money, there is cycling and soccer. Not much else to my knowledge.

For competition in sports for talented athletes, US has (gridiron) football, baseball, basketball, golf, tennis, ice hockey, cycling ..what am I leaving out? At the early developmental stage of sports youth, Soccer is played in grammar and junior high..and somewhat in high school. Then it trails off. It's been hard to keep moving the potentially talented athletes along and retain them in soccer.

I wonder if the US taps into its latino talent pool enough. Not many hispanic names in that squad... If it's true that many players in the US are latinos, then there something wrong with that picture.

In European teams, you see a lot of people of African origin. Many of them are born in Europe, but not all. Sometimes a player is given the nationality just because he's good, so that he can play in the national team. And nobody cries that this is "moral decay" or anything like that, like Coulter did.

Well, almost no one. Le Pen (French extreme right) made a comment in 1998 that there were not enough "true French" in the team. It did nothing for his popularity when the French squad ended up winning the cup...

What? Your team losing? I don't much like the San Francisco 49er's losing an american football game, it takes me a few minutes to get over, but I'm not affected by the US WC team losing after getting this far along, which I had thought was good for them to have done.
I just poured myself a beer and called a friend, and not about that.

Oh, the beer is Rio Grande Outlaw Lager, a new one I'm trying out.

Soccer . . . boooooorrrrrr-ing . . .

Ann Coulter . . . thick as a brick, and booooooorrrrrrr-ing . . .

The only thought worse would be living in Stoneham, Mass . . . oops! . . . time for me to run . . .

Now Ann Coulter has to scramble around for another fake premise to point out that conservative 'values' and 'family values' are in danger from another source.