World Cup: US - England

A strange phenomena - I love America and I love soccer, but I don't love American soccer. I root for our team, but don't feel it in my bones the way I can tell other people from other countries root for their teams. I always expect us to play poorly. We played okay yesterday. England played much worse than I expected. Rooney didn't do much. Their center mids - Lampard and Gerrard are too similar - they both play like a holding center mid and neither gets up an attacks like a Zidane or Rosicky or even Donavan when he plays center mid. England has strong players all around and ought to be better, but their second striker isn't super dangerous and again, lack that attacker/finisher coming up behind the strikers.

Clint Dempsey and Landon Donavan are both good players. Altidore made that really nice turn in the 2nd half and almost scored a 2nd goal. Impressive. Our defense was really disorganized in the beginning and that allowed the first England goal. Good that our team didn't fold and we got lucky with the England goalie pulling a Bill Buckner. We'll take the tie, for sure, as we should win our next two games and then get out of the first round. Anything can happen after that - at least now our team seems capable of an upset as we have several players who are dangerous offensively.

On the flipside, we are also capable of blowing a game and although I didn't watch Slovania or Algeria play, Slovania won, so we need to beat them or beat Algeria 2-0.