Same Old Story: The US Was Embarrassed, Laid An Egg And Flat Out Sucked In Our Biggest Game Ever To End This World Cup
I don't want to sound like a broken record but it's the same old story. What the fuck was that? This was supposed to be different. This team looked different up until this game. Then it happened. A round of 16 loss to a top-10 team from Europe. It's the same story we've had since 2002. Only difference is 1) this game was on home soil, 2) we weren't a massive underdog and 3) I've never seen mistakes like this in what was the biggest game in US Soccer history
There are no moral victories. Not when you had a chance, with the entire country behind you and you did that. You get beat with dumb mistakes. You have the single dumbest play in US Soccer history. You get smoked in the midfield. You don't create chances and even then you still had it 1-1! It took 60 seconds for that tie to go away. That can't happen. It's mind blowing that it happened, mind bottling even. Not to mention, Belgium hasn't looked good! That's not to say Belgium isn't good, but this wasn't 2014 Belgium or 2018.
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I'm not ready to sit here and try to argue if it's a success or not. It always felt like this team had to make the quarterfinals. That was especially true with the way we looked in the first 4 games or the fact that we had Balogun back for this game. You had the whole country get swept up with this team. That's the first time I really remember everyone doing it to this degree. Great. But then the lights were too bright. Tillman and Balogun were fine, everyone else? Kind of bad all around. A lot of terrible showings with Pulisic, Dest, Freeman, Freese, Ream. I mean the list goes on, but just off the top of my head, those guys were as bad as I've seen.
The lights were too bright for guys that it shouldn't be. They all play at high levels. Most of them were in the round of 16 four years ago. That's what pisses me off most about this team. It was dumb mistakes and the lights being too bright. At some point something has to change with the mindset of the players or something, because this had all the makings of a team for a run, then they did this. It was basically 89 minutes of getting their ass kicked.