Overall it was a decent showing by the U.S. soccer team to make it to the knockout round in the World Cup but they wasted an opportunity in losing to Ghana. The U.S. played well in the second half but it wasn’t good enough. Jozy Altidore didn’t do much although he made a nice attempt on a goal with his left foot after he was tripped – that could have been called a penalty.
Robbie Findley made a weak shot right at the goalie, near the ground, and Michael Bradley did the same thing, though he had a great tournament. It’s called not coming up big when it counts. I’m happy the shots didn’t go 100 yards over the goal like a lot of other shots at the World Cup did, but they could have made better efforts. We’ll never know if the Americans’ defense would have been better if Oguchi Onyewu had played. Tim Howard had a bad angle on the goal too.
It was a failure, but there’s always 2014. The players should feel badly. They may never get another chance like that again. It’s just that both Ghana and Uruguay were beatable – the U.S. could have made it to the semis for the first time ever. At least now a team from Africa has made it to the final 8.
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