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Jay Mariotti

Can US Sustain Seminal Moment?

Posted Jun 25, 2009 1:00AM By Jay Mariotti (RSS feed)

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Carlos Bocanegra and Landon Donovan celebrateDavid Beckham can hawk his signature cologne in our department stores, including Macy's in New York, where an employee followed me down an aisle and sprayed some of Becks' metrosexual potion on me. But soccer? He'd much rather play in Europe than in our league, which explains all you need to know about the game's place in America.

In the stateside food chain of professional sports, men's soccer has been a can of Spam. If you have absolutely nothing better to eat, you nibble. It isn't so true on the women's side, where Mia Hamm and the golden girls captivated a nation for years and Brandi Chastain gave us a landmark moment for feminism by stripping down to her sports bra.

But the men? The quality of play has been so maligned that Giuseppe Rossi, who was born and raised in New Jersey and could have been a major star for our national squad, never even considered Team USA. In his teen years, he tapped into his dual citizenship and signed up with Italy, a global football power.

Some called him Benedict Arnold, a traitor. I'd have called him Tom Arnold, a goofball, if he hadn't gone. Consider, for instance, the U.S. record against No. 1 teams coming into the Confederations Cup:

1-7-1. Run, Giuseppe, run.

"We're not chasing around 18-year-old players that can't get games for their club teams and tell me they want to play for Italy," said Bruce Arena, then the U.S. national coach, ending any chance of persuading Rossi to stay.

Only days ago, it was Rossi who scored twice against the spurned Americans, leading Italy to a 3-1 victory in the Cup, a championship tournament conducted by world governing body FIFA. "I dedicate my goals to my family, who are watching the game on TV in America," Rossi said afterward. It seemed a cruel joke, another stab of the voodoo doll, the latest evidence that soccer in America is best left ignored by everyone but suburban parents in minivans, a cliche that would be annoying if it wasn't positively accurate.

But who knew that this week, somewhere in South Africa, a soccer apocalypse suddenly would descend upon Team USA? Who knew that a bizarre tiebreaker system would lift the Americans to the semifinal round over the Italians, despite the head-to-head victory by Italy that sensibly should have prevailed over all other criteria? And who knew that a couple of days after I walked through Macy's, home of Miracle on 34th Street, that our homeboys would pull off a Miracle on Grass?

I am shocked to report that the Americans are the talk of the sports world today. They advanced to the tournament final with a 2-0 win over Spain, the world's premier team, which hadn't lost in 35 games before a stunner as unlikely as the dateline: BLOEMFONTEIN, as tough to spell as it is pronounce. OK, so the Confederations Cup isn't quite the biggest event in soccer, but in terms of positioning Team USA for a seeding in next summer's World Cup, which is the biggest event in soccer, the victory is huge. What it does is announce to the masses, at last, that America is serious about a game that the rest of the world treats as part-religion, part-psychosis. Without the backdrop of a Cold War, of course, the triumph over Spain is vaguely reminiscent of the Miracle on Ice, when our hockey lads trumped the powerful and very evil Soviets in the 1980 Winter Olympics. The working comparison is talent.

Tim HowardThe Americans, ranked 14th in the world entering this event, include mostly second-tier players. Team Spain, by every definition, is an elite operation.

Didn't matter Wednesday night, one of the greatest nights in U.S. soccer history, when Spam turned to fillet.

"I can't explain it anymore than you can," said U.S. goalie Tim Howard, who stood mightily against a Spanish attack that had a 11-4 shots advantage on goal. "Sports is funny sometimes, but when you put your mind to something, you can achieve it. Three games ago, I think it would have been impossible to think about a night like this. We've had our fair share of critics, but we stood up and took it on the chin and kept going. It goes to show what hard work and commitment to each other can bring."

"I think it just shows we can compete with the best," U.S. captain Carlos Bocanegra said. "Now we need to do it on a consistent basis."

He's right about that. They may have our attention now, but to sustain mainstream interest and respect in their own country, the Americans must carry excellence over a long period. Beating Spain won't change a sports culture wrapped around football, baseball and basketball, with a little Tiger Woods, hockey, tennis and NASCAR involved incrementally. There must be a Square One for soccer after years of failure in trying to build a superpower in this country. Might this be it? Might this spur a boom in which Major League Soccer attracts better and deeper talent, more teenaged kids adopt the sport and America becomes as immersed in the world game like fanatics in other countries? Uh, I don't think so.

But if Team USA rises to a prominent level on the world stage and stays there, a growth spurt is inevitable. In 2002, the Americans beat Mexico and advanced to the World Cup quarterfinals. Little else has happened since, before Wednesday. "There will ups and downs in any cycle," U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati said. "I think this tournament makes that point very clearly. Tonight was a very big up."

Next comes the final against Brazil, which easily handled the U.S. in a 3-0 win last week. It won't help that midfielder Michael Bradley, son of U.S. coach Bob Bradley, was banned from the title game after drawing a red card for a sliding tackle late in the Spain game.

"We're happy with the result, but we know we're going to have our work cut out to get anything out of the final," said U.S. star Clint Dempsey, who scored one of the two goals against Spain.

Jozy AltidoreDon't underestimate this team's brass. Jozy Altidore, who scored the other goal, participated in pre-game trash texting with Spain's Joan Capdevila, his teammates on Spain's Villarreal club. When Altidore broke Spain's 451-minute streak of holding opponents scoreless, he removed his jersey, Chastain-like, and whipped it into the stands on a cold night. "I told him, 'Be careful of the USA,' " Altidore said.

"And he tried to say that I didn't understand Spanish, so it was just all fun and games. We're teammates and we were just messing around with each other a little bit, but in the end, we had the last laugh."

They also had the last laugh on Rossi, crazily enough. What kind of topsy-turvy world is it when Team USA is playing for a championship and Italy is at home? "If the guy doesn't want to play for us," said Landon Donovan, the reigning face of American soccer, "then I don't really care about him."

For once, these guys have the swag.

Tags: Bob+Bradley, Carlos+Bocanegra, Clint+Dempsey, Confederations+Cup, ConfederationsCup, Giuseppe+Rossi, Jozy+Altidore, Landon+Donovan, Michael+Bradley, Sunil+Gulati, Tim+Howard

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Jay Mariotti

Jay MariottiJay Mariotti is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse.com. He is a daily panelist on ESPN's sports-debate show, "Around The Horn,'' seen Monday through Friday at 5 p.m. ET. Mariotti spent 17 years as a lead sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and has covered every major sporting event -- national and worldwide -- on multiple occasions.