They’re ripping my guts out…2-1 at 62:04 in favor of Ghana. Ugh!

You’re right about the patriotism thing. We have a French foreign exchange student with our family now and when we went to the Phillies game the other night it was striking. It always is with foreigners around (one of my best friends is a German citizen living in the U.S., and it’s always interesting to go to 4th of July events with him…he sits during the Anthem and people around us think he’s a heathen).

I think they can pull this one out, but we’ll see. Header on the goal post hurt.

I can’t stand patriotism at the ballpark. Yankee stadium, I’m sad to say, is the worst with that.

Italy just went up 2-0 with about 5 minutes left to play; our fate is in our hands.

I just watched this travesty masquerading as a soccer match at a local lunch establishment. Here’s the thing: if the game of soccer was about knocking the ball around the middle of the field for 90 minutes with no aspiration to go any further than that, then the U.S.A. would be champions of the world. But unfortunately, there are these things called goals at each end of the pitch and you’re kind of supposed to aim for one of them, at least once or twice.

All of this is aside from the Ghanaian theatrics, which were very tiresome. If soccer was a falling over and rolling around on the ground contest, they would be the champions of the world. Except that Italy might beat them at it.

But really, this has to be down to Bruce Arena at some point, don’t you think, on a tactical level? It looked to me that throughout this World Cup the U.S. team displayed a total lack of imagination or initiative with regard to the attacking phase of the game. My English people demonstrate week in and week out that the long ball game doesn’t work, so why you’d want to copy that is completely beyond me.

The chicken sandwich was good, though. Spicy.

How much do you want to bet the guy in the picture is opposed to flag burning?

Wrapping his sweaty body in Old Glory MC Hammer pants, however, is acceptable.

Matt — happy to have you back!

I love that you are blogging about soccer! Excellent. I am thinking about playing again.

@Brian: the question is — where can I buy a pair?

@Catherine: thanks. I’m hankering to play again, too. I usually do play in this Sunday game (if any other Philly people are interested), but haven’t been able to make it recently.

There is nothing quite like jingoism to ruin your appetite. My favorite are all the plastic flag stickers that showed up post 911. Ick. A flag doesn’t make you patriotic folks.

Just got back from Germany and the U.S. World Cup games and I’m catching up on my blog reading, so sorry for a comment on an already old post, but what you write about here was something a lot of us felt in Germany. I’m telling you, almost every American fan was wrapped in a U.S. flag in some form, just like all the fans from all the other countries were doing. Yet, it was hard to do that and to cheer for the USA without feeling like we were simultaneously cheering for current US policy. I hate that the flag and patriotism has been taken over like this.

For example, Brian’s comment, “How much do you want to bet the guy in the picture is opposed to flag burning?” is exactly how a lot of us felt, that displaying the flag made us look like Bush supporters. And in fact, at one bar where the US fans had gathered and were all cheering together before the US-Italy game, someone walked past the group and called out, “go home Bush babies”. So people do make assumptions when they see all those US flags.

Fortunately, one of the chants I heard a lot at the last World Cup - “Superpower, superpower, USA!” - was noticeably absent this time. In fact, the mood was very distinctly apolitical over there as far as I could tell, even though one of the games was right by a US base. Everyone was pretty much focused on soccer (and German beer).

Later on, putting my own discomfort into perspective, one of our German friends (who lives in Berlin) mentioned to us that it was strange for them to see so much German patriotism and flag waving…