Looking at the Math from World Cup 2010 (the Slightly Less Lazy Man's Way)

It seems like for as long as I've been reading columns from Soccer America and World Soccer's resident curmudgeon, Paul Gardner, he has been bitching about the lack of attacking soccer in the modern age, often while simultaneously laying the blame at the feet of his fellow Europeans and their negative, overly defensive tactics. His latest entry in the canon is a pseudo-analysis of the 2010 games partially anchored on the goals-per-game average of the tournament, with its apparent current proximity to that of the 1990 nadir of the Italian tournament being used as primary evidence of said proclamation.

Well, I can be every bit as lazy as the next man, borrowing calculations either widely available or already added up by somebody else, but hopefully by taking the logical next step of actually looking at them a bit more critically than taking them at face value we might see something a little more complex than Gardner's facile and lazy interpretations on offer.

First, let's just start with the basic World Cup 2010 numbers. As of the completion of the Quarterfinals this past Saturday, the 2010 games have averaged 2.2166 goals per game, whereas at the completion of the 1990 tournament, the average was 2.2115. Now the danger of comparing numbers from partially completed events with those already completed is that not only do you have to venture off into the territory of predicting the unknown future, but you have only imperfect historical information to guide you.

In order to combat that challenge, you can take the simplistic approach Gardner does and not even bother to do anything other than simply assume that the final result will be close to the current result and let that speak for itself, as if these kinds of numbers occur in a straight line through the tournament.

But to place any faith in that, you would have to ignore even the experience of this tournament's results so far, which started out with the lowest averages ever after the first round of games were completed, naturally causing a cacophony of so-called experts trying to extrapolate out from the first week of play to the tournament as a whole (here, here and here for example), making the seductive false equivalence of other first weeks while ignoring the fact that the whole point of waiting to measure averages until the end or near the end of a tournament is that you lose the noise inherent in such a small sample size as 16 games in a tournament of 64 games.

How much impact have the final 4 games had on the final goal per game averages historically? Here's a little table to show how these numbers have compared since 1982 when the tournament consisted of at least 52 games (1978 had 38 games, so a much smaller sampling to average from):

Year	Goals/Game First Games	4-goal games in First Games	Goals/game pre-semis	Final Goals/game	Goals in Final 4 Games
2010	1.5625	1	2.2167	n/a	n/a
2006	2.4375	5	2.3000	2.2969	9
2002	2.8750	5	2.5333	2.5156	9
1998	2.3125	5	2.6667	2.6719	11
1994	2.5000	4	2.7708	2.7115	8
1990	2.2500	2	2.2500	2.2115	7
1986	2.0000	2	2.4375	2.5385	15
1982	2.8333	3	2.6875	2.8077	17

First round games with aggregate scores of 4 goals or more:

• While there were only 3 of these games in 1982, 18 goals between a 10-1 Hungary win over El Salvador and a 5-2 drubbing of New Zealand by Scotland, plus England 3-1 over eventual semi-finalists France makes it easily more the equivalent of 4 or 5 high-scoring games.
• 1986 also featured a lop-sided first games result with a Soviet Union team thrashing Hungary 6-0, in addition to a more normal 3-1 Argentina vs. South Korea scoreline.
• 1990's numbers were pumped up by a game 1 victory for the Czech's over the US, 5-1, plus a 4-1 win for West Germany over Yugoslavia.
• 1994 saw 4-0 Argentina over Greece, and Romania starting off pre-tournament favorites Colombia's chances of winning on the wrong foot with a 3-1 defeat, Cameroon drawing Sweden 2-2, and Spain equaling that score vs. South Korea.
• 1998 again featured more parity than trips to the wood-shed, with only 2-2 draws for Morocco-Norway and Italy-Chile, Nigeria shocking Spain 3-2, then Mexico beating South Korea and Croatia over Jamaica by identical 3-1 scores.
• 2002 saw a throw-back in Germany's 8-0 win over Saudi Arabia, but otherwise had a 3-1 tournament opening victory for Spain over Slovenia, a 3-2 US upset over Portugal, and 2-2 draws for Paraguay-South Africa and Japan-Belgium.
• 2006 had hosts Germany 4-2 over Costa Rica, Spain beating Ukraine 4-0, 3-1 wins for both Mexico vs. Iran and Australia vs. Japan, and then the ever-popular 2-2 draw for Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.
• 2010 the only 4-goal first round game at all was semi-finalists Germany 4-0 over Australia.

That 2010 result is going to skew the ability to extrapolate from first games to the results when the last whistle blows at the end of the Final a bit I'm guessing. There had to be quite a bit more goal-scoring in the next several games to make up that much ground between where we started in South Africa and where we stand today.

Now, adding it all up what do we get? Who the heck knows. Sometimes you get a glut of goals to bump the final numbers up as in 1982, 1986 or 1998; sometimes you go down a hair or just hold steady. With 3 of the 4 survivors tied as having the third stingiest defense at 0.4 goals allowed per game, and the Netherlands only a hair back, goals should be hard to come by.

Though at the same time, I don't think any of the remaining 4 possesses an Italian fortress of a truly impenetrable defense. Germany and Spain in particular appear to be operating more under the "attack is the best defense" motto of a traditional Brazilian team, instead of relying on brute force to stop the opposition.

I would argue that in fact the chief problem with this tournament hasn't simply been the low number of average goals per game, but overall the lack of any ability to capitalize on the ample opportunities presented for most teams. In other words, we've got a glut of talented midfielders, when what the world needs more of is out-and-out strikers and goal-poachers like Miroslav Klose (rested after being benched for his club) and David Villa.

The over-all dearth of talented goal-scorers becomes far more obvious when we look at the much-lamented failures of the tired or injured Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba, Francisco Torres, et al to give us a taste of what we came to see (here's where I agree with Gardner: we came to see goals). Of course Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson is going to say Rooney was fit, all evidence to the contrary. Do you think he wants to take the blame for such a quiet tournament for the English star? Ferguson's attempted deflection by claiming it was all of the pressure responsible for the lackluster performance is laughable, as if Rooney has no such pressure when playing for Manchester United.

Even some of the phenomenal galaxy of midfielders that actually made it in body if not spirit to South Africa didn't live anywhere's near to pre-tournament billing: Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, and Lionel Messi, the last 3 FIFA World Players of the Year winner, to say nothing of France's mutinous Franck Ribery.

How can you watch this ubiquitous "Write the Future" Nike ad and not feel pissed off, demanding your money back:


Tactics, whether negative or positive (Dunga being the exception), don't count for jack-shit when players don't have any legs left due to injury or simple exhaustion, and can't simply kick the ball into an net.

Think about it: had Ghana been able to simply score a last-second freebie penalty kick, they'd be one of the 4 still standing, instead of Uruguay. Similar arguments could be made for most of the teams that went home early this year. It wasn't a stifling defense that knocked England out vs. Germany, it was the English team's own inability to score. Argentina, ditto. Mexico and the USA? Yup. Other than the 7 goals Portugal put past North Korea, Cristiano Ronaldo and company did absolutely nada, zilch, diddly-squat in their other games.

Thankfully, Germany and Holland have been two of the more effective offenses, and with as much fire-power as the Spanish theoretically have on-hand if anybody other than David Villa figures out how to find the back of the net, we may see the 9 goals total in the final four games necessary to stay above the Italian low-water mark (1-0, 2-1, 2-1 and 2-0 does the trick).

Now what are the odds that FIFA tries to get a little sack and actually limit the number of competitive games stars at the top level play for their clubs so we don't see another dismal display due to such over-work come 4 years from now in Brazil? I'd pay good money to see another heavyweight battle between FIFA and UEFA/G-14 (or whatever the cabal of big european super clubs is calling themselves this year) over who has more right to over-exploit the players.

The Round of 16 Results are in, and Bradley's USA Hits a New Low

Now that all of the second round games have been played and my bracket picks completely destroyed, one thing that I noted from looking at the results based on the available stats was that the US was the only higher-ranked (14-32 FIFA, 15-37 SPI, 21-39 ELO), higher-positioned team to have lost in their round of 16 matchup. There literally were no upsets, though the spain-portugal at 2 vs. 3 and germany-england 6 vs. 8 were theoretically toss-ups according to FIFA. ELO and SPI rankings had Spain far ahead, whereas they had England and Germany switched, but still extremely tight with SPI saying 6 vs. 3 and ELO 5 vs. 4.


What does that say? Not necessarily too terribly much in the end since Ghana was still the only continental contender remaining from hosts Africa, which has to be worth something, but one of the things that's always frustrated me as an American fan has been watching us struggle against teams like Haiti (a 2-2 draw in 2009 Gold Cup). Yes it was our B/C team, that also got trounced by El Tri 5-0 in Giants Stadium, but come on, it's Haiti, a team lucky to even qualify for the first group phases of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying.


As much as I hope, and think, we should win against nominally lesser teams like Ghana, I honestly feel like at this point in our history we're more likely to blow a game like that, find a way to lose rather than win, and it shouldn't be that way. I kind of wonder if the players feel that way as well judging by Carlos Bocanegra's skyward glance as Asamoah Gyan out-muscled him to the ball on his game-winning OT goal for Ghana.

Three Suggested Questions for Sunil Gulati to Bob Bradley

Bob Bradley, What Have You Done For Us Lately?
It feels a bit un-seemly to be discussing this so close to the cold corpse that is the US soccer team's dreams in South Africa, but it's also hard to ignore a burning topic, so I may as well wade into the swamp with a couple initial post-mortem notes.

First, let me echo US Fed president Sunil Gulati's statement that progressing to the second round was a disappointment. True, it wasn't the utter failure that not progressing out of Group C would have been, especially with the surprise first place finish, but let's be honest that we won the group not by dint of our own awesome prowess, but by the utter collapse of a theoretically better England. And furthermore, that first place finish opened the door to some opportunities best not missed, just like Robbie Findley's 1 on 1 with Ghana goalie Richard Kingson.

Second, it sucks to know that this very well may have been the swan song of the American player of his generation, and the best so far, Landon Donovan, but at least it wasn't as bad of a farewell as Claudio Reyna's was, the best of the previous generation, and experienced 4 years prior against the very same team, but at an earlier stage in the tournament. It's just a shame that he came of age for an American soccer nation still at the relatively early stages of an up-slope in development of skilled players, which meant that he and Clint Dempsey had far more of a burden of carrying the team on their shoulders than they ever should have. Quite simply, somebody else should have been able to convert the numerous chances presented to our attack by the hard work and sweat of these two talented midfielders.

Now back to picking at the carcass. Mr. Gulati said he was looking forward to getting a chance to sit down with Coach Bradley in the next couple weeks and hear the answers Bradley might have for some of the questions that are at the front of Gulati's mind, which is only good and fair; the kind of respect deserved by someone who put in the ungodly amount of work Bradley must have in preparing this squad of mostly strivers to compete at the highest levels.

It's also good because there are quite a few rather obvious questions that I think anybody would need answered before handing the keys to the team for another 4-year cycle, something rare at the highest levels of international soccer. Unfortunately, I don't know that there are many of those questions that Bradley will have not just no good answer to, but likely no answer at all for, as he just doesn't have the depth of experience to draw from to provide them.

The basic gist of this is going to be, by what criteria could Bob Bradley be said to have done better than any alternative that might be available, since his principle achievement amounts to no more than succeeding at guiding a team that should have progressed to the second round, which equates to not messing them up so badly that they failed at that most fundamental of levels?

That's no knock on him, it's just a reality as to the experience and opportunities available to American coaches, who as a fraternity have yet to get any serious calls from foreign clubs that would give them a chance to learn something more meaningful than how to win a scholastic championship, or how to manage a meagre budget in a league of limited aspirations.

With that in mind, here's my suggestions for questions that are hopefully on Mr. Gulati's list for Coach Bradley:

• Top of the list is, what would he have done differently to have won either of two very winnable games? That's not to say that the games against Slovenia or Ghana were gimmes, but they were still obviously winnable, and a coach who has nothing to offer by way of alternatives to what he actually tried really shouldn't be given much chance to repeat himself.
• Second, how is he going to try and find and develop better strikers? In most countries of the world, player development at such a fundamental level isn't the concern of the national team coach, but let's be honest that it is for the US, and the job is what the job is. As Gulati noted, it is significant to have gone through 7 games now at the World Cup over 2 cycles without a single goal being scored by a forward, and it's not like we've got a deep bench waiting in the wings, so somebody needs to do something to start priming the pump, which will likely involve a lot of convincing and cajoling of both players and amenable club officials to find the right situations to get somebody, anybody who can do a job we haven't seen done simply and well since the retirement of Brian McBride.
• How is he going to better organize or prepare the defense to avoid the mental mistake of lacking concentration at the beginning of halves and giving up balls and space, directly leading to easy goals? The only reason I can think of that a player who otherwise is capable of playing better doesn't is that he's nervous, or distracted, or unsettled in some other way, but fundamentally he is not focused on starting off well. The first ten to fifteen minutes of any period should be the primary points of any game that a coach's words or other interaction should be still present at the front of the players mind. Once they get beyond that time, the game itself tends to do the job of getting the player in synch. Logic dictates that you see different results if something is truly given to chance, and conversely if you see repeating patterns, there is a reason for it which can usually be at least hinted at by finding the one common thread, and that thread right now looks, smells and sounds like Bob Bradley, and that doesn't bode well for him unless he has some answer as to why.

Assuming he doesn't have any good answers to those questions, and it's hard to conceive that he could have anything good enough to justify being retained unless we can't think of a single other person who could have done as good of a job with the current crop, which would be a sad statement in and of itself, what do we need to look for in candidates for the next coach?

I'll try to play against type here and be relatively brief for once: someone with experience playing and coaching at the highest level, and at a minimum knowing what it takes as a coach to win since the best coaches weren't always the best players (and frequently aren't), but it's hard to conceive of how the next coach will be able to make a convincing argument that he knows what needs to be done to succed to what will by 2014 be a crop of the most seasoned international club players we've ever had available otherwise.

And to echo another point from above, he needs to know how to project confidence and calm to the players, to be able to settle their nerves and get them not just prepared in the days leading up to a game, but in the moments before they step on the field to do their jobs.

And lastly, he needs to be able to help develop players into achieving their potential. That's not necessarily going to just mean what lessons are imparted on the practice field, but also advice on how to manage their careers, constantly reminding them that champions are always declared so after winning, so the best they can try to do to get to that level is to push themselves to always kick everybody's ass at every level they compete, whether it be MLS, the US Open, SuperLiga, CONCACAF Champions Cup, etc., whatever opportunity is presented to them.

If they want to be a goal scorer, they have to know how to score goals at every level, and not just think that they need to be in the right system, with the stars aligned perfectly, the right coach, etc. The best score goals in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil or any of a number of feeder leagues that are already a step above MLS, then score goals in France, Holland or Portugal, then finally move on to Spain, England, Germany or Italy. It's hard to argue that you deserve to play for Real Madrid when you can't even score goals for Real Salt Lake.

Is South Africa 2010 Deja Vu 2002 All Over Again?

More and more, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is starting to resemble the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan than either of the surrounding European hosted affairs in 1998 and 2006.

There have been several upsets of big teams, with 2 of the 8 pre-tournament seeds going home, just like in 2002, except including for the first time ever the host country, but as the Bafana Bafana was widely considered the worst host nation ever, something only the truly delusional weren't convinced of, that was more expected than it otherwise would have been. And with one of those seeds finishing second in their group, England, that means that a maximum of 5 seeds will make it as one of the 8 quarterfinalists, but I'll go out on a limb here and say that just as in 2002, one of those remaining seeds ain't going to beat their unseeded opponent to make it there either.

Which one? I'm guessing that Spain is going to lose to Portugal, their peninsular co-habitants, long-time rivals in affairs colonial, cheese, wine, and for all we know, the affection of La Belle France.

One reason is that if the Swiss and Americans can figure out how to beat La Furia Roja, why not Portugal? Another is that the one time an un-seeded team beat a seeded team in 2002 was when the Turkish team that finished second to Brazil went on to beat seeded hosts Japan. The seeded team that kept Portugal out of first place? Of course you know that also was eventual tournament champions Brazil, so it's really not that far-fetched to believe that the Portuguese would have won most of the other groups, and isn't a traditional un-seeded nor second place team. And by all measures including the formula that FIFA used to seed teams, there really isn't that much separating the two of them.

Plus, Portugal like the US vs. Mexico in 2002, are more motivated than their opponents due to the above-noted rivalry and the typical accompanying inferiority complex.

That'd be sad, for even though the Spanish have under-achieved this year, at their best they've been one of the few bright spots this tournament in their last two games, and Cristiano Ronaldo has been pretty disappointing given his pre-tournament hype. But if Portugal wins, I think it's going to be with some skillful team play, which would be nice to see for a change.

As far as the rest of the seeds, it's bad news for Mexico, Slovakia, and Chile, but I don't see any of them having that extra something necessary to overcome the favorites in their matchups. And as for the English, finishing second in a group constructed to protect their progress to the second round doesn't bode well for them, nor does their history vs. the Germans (home cooking in 1966 not-withstanding), plus the Germans are playing a much more attractive, non-traditional game than the stultifying stuff of 1986 and 1990, so I'm going with Die Mannschaft over the limey bastards (I can only call them toothless so many times before it bores even me, but then again…).



One aspect of the 2002 template that should be worrisome to US fans is that in the 3 games featuring match-ups between un-seeded teams, the 2nd place finisher actually beat the 1st place finisher. That pattern worked for the US in their matchup vs. Mexico, but this year that would seem to point to a Ghanaian victory, and with the hopes of an entire continent as the lone remaining African competitor, that only adds to the factors that actually support Alexi Lalas' seemingly Lou Holtz-esque contention that the US is going into this game paradoxically as an underdog.

I did look a little bit further to see if there were any qualifying factors that may have pointed to the 2 non-US second place un-seeded winners in 2002 (always looking for patterns, that's how my brain works), since the US was always going to beat Mexico in our game, and really the only one of those two that truly counts as a surprise and upset was Senegal upsetting Sweden to move on to the quarterfinals. The other un-seeded second place team that happened to go on to the quarters that year was England over Denmark, and by every measure other than the order of their group finish, England was considered the better of the two teams.

So with only 1 out of the 3 games in 2002 being anomalous, which should we pay more attention to, the placement of the un-seeded teams in their group, or their comparative rankings across the various systems? I'll go for the numbers over superstition, while hedging sufficiently by saying that home court advantage has to boost Ghana to a place where the field will be much more even than a true neutral field game would be, so maybe we go to penalties and Tim Howard earns his angel wings.

How Long Do We Have to Wait For Instant Replay in the World Cup?

Of all of the stupid, backwards-looking, incomprehensible things to come out of FIFA Supremo Sepp Blatter's mouth, or the minutes of what must be some hellacious old-fashioned cocktail hour board meetings of soccer's rules-making body IFAB, the reflexive resistance to figuring out how to use even relatively old 20th-century technology, or even more human eyeballs, to help enforce soccer's much-touted adherence to the honorable notion of "Fair Play" has got to be a low of breath-taking imbecility masquerading as banal conservatism, just attempting to hold back the corrupting tides of faddish Modernism and all its evils, like the rise of the Beatles and the Stones, the arrival of chicks in the office who don't work in the typing pool, or the decline of the social acceptance of smoke-filled, 3-martini "working" lunches: the usual assortment of things too many cranky old farts everywhere in the civilized world still bitch about.

Fortunately for us, the US soccer team have given us examples in back-to-back World Cup games of both the imperative need for some sort of help for poor, over-matched, under-experienced political appointees cum international referees like US-Slovenia center man Koman Coulibaly, as well as a cautionary tale of the still real limitations even the most perfect of technology can provide to far more experienced European referees, generally considered the standard in the business by which all others are measured.

When the ball crosses the goal line, play has to be stopped, no matter what, just as it did on Maurice Edu's apparent game-winner vs. Slovenia. It is a patent absurdity to argue that it's less disruptive and corrosive to the spectators' enjoyment and the flow of the game to watch the inevitable crush of half a dozen pissed off Michael Bradley types bum-rushing the official and/or their assistant, plus the amount of time it takes them to restore order and put the ball back into play than it would be to have a 5th official take 30-60 seconds to quickly and dispassionately review any controversial play to determine whether it was or wasn't a goal, and then relay said word from on high via the funny little futuristic-loooking black piece of technology attached to the heads of all officials at top matches already, something definitely not available to teams at any other levels of play, though not really necessary at the vast majority of organized games in the world that are today overseen by a single, nominally neutral, official.



At the same time, such reviews will still necessarily involve a human being looking at all of those multitudes of ESPN Axis-style video replay angles and make a judgement call. That official will have to look at a play like Clint Dempsey's dis-allowed goal versus Algeria and then decide where Dempsey's position lies on the imaginary, infinitesimally narrow line dividing even from off as defined by FIFA's current interpretation, always offered as the solution to the ever-declining goal-scoring rate that has eaten like a cancer at the soul of the game for far too long already. Is even with the second-to-last defender still considered off, or is it now on? Is it enough for a pinky toe to be beyond that defender, or is it like the out of bounds rule, where the whole of the object has to be on the other side?



Just reviewing any single game, much less the entirety of the South African tournament thus far, you can see the range of interpretations and judgement calls even for a single person with a hopefully consistent idea of what he SHOULD be calling based on variables (we're all in trouble if assistant referees turn out to be largely populated by schizophrenics).

In the best of circumstances, at a minimum the assistant referee is required to take in two often-times widely divergent places in space: the passer of the ball behind the play so the assistant can see the exact moment that the ball leaves the passer's foot on the way to the recipient, as well as the recipient's position in relation to the second-to-last defender, theoretically aided by the assistant referee's attempt to stay even with that defender to make it more clear.

That's a pain in the ass to get precisely correct when any of the objects is stationary, and well nigh a miracle when all 3 are moving, as is generally the case, and at the highest levels of international and professional club play that movement is at a great pace.

However, that complication doesn't excuse knowing acceptance of un-necessary injustice, nor Blatter's absurd glorification of Unfair Play that resulted in the robbing of Edu of a World Cup as the only possible position of a true Humanist. Only the most twisted of Swiss lawyers could see right in such a Kafka-esque vision of reality.

Why the US does, and doesn't, have to beat Algeria

By any of a gazillion different ways to pre-judge Wednesday's final World Cup Group C game between the US and Algeria, the US should beat Algeria Wednesday in Pretoria.

It's that simple. Man for man the US has better, more experienced players, has more depth on the bench, more consistency as a team and individually, and knows how to get a result when needed, as they did last year at the Confederations Cup against Algeria's bitter arch-rivals Egypt in the 3rd game of a group stage (to say nothing of every time in the past 18 months that they've collectively shot themselves in the foot by starting a game conceding an early goal).

You could look at FIFA rankings, ELO ratings, ESPN's SPI ratings, history, Soccernomics-style GDP, population size, hormonally fattened babies per capita, etc., and they all point to a US victory at Loftus Versfeld Stadium. You could even look at the US results so far this tournament by comparison and see that while the US is overdue for 3 points, the Algerians have over-achieved simply by getting a point against England's 3 Toothless Lions (Rooney, Lampard and Terry).

It is more likely that the same disciplined and organized Slovenian side that knocked Russia out during the final European qualifying playoffs will get at least a point out of the squabling, disorganized and lifeless England, than Algeria will get the win it would need to advance to the second round. The odds are far better, but still somewhat unlikely, that Ghana will get at least a draw in their final Group D game against Germany later Wednesday, making them the only African team out of the 6 competing to qualify for the knockout stages.

While some might point to the seemingly bad omen from the US collapse vs. Ghana in 2006 at the same stage in the tournament, a game in which the US also held its fate in its hands, the funny thing about tournaments with round robin group stages first is that they usually tend to do their stated job of ensuring that the stronger teams make it out, and the weaker ones go home early (as do the ones who are strong on paper, but internally come apart at the seams: see ya France!). In 2006, we were widely considered 3rd best, though statistically insignificantly we ended up 4th.

As a matter of fact, by looking dispassionately at the US results in the last 3 World Cups, those held since the field was expanded to 32 teams resulting in only the top 2 teams advancing to the next round, using the same variety of comparative metrics tools as I mentioned above that point to a US win, spreadsheet after spreadsheet of game results and rankings, and you can see as I did that the US actually did about what was expected of them, individual game results not-withstanding.

Which is exactly the point of using theoretically objective systems to measure comparative strength: while not a crystal ball that will allow you to beat the house in Vegas, they give you a framework on which you can base an educated guess as to who should win maybe 3 out of 4 times (or 22 out of 23 times if you're talking about the US vs. Mexico at Estadio Azteca).

Logically that means that in a single game in one of the most unpredictable, low-scoring sports like soccer, who the heck knows what's going to happen? Think about the bull shit NFL cliche about how any team can beat any other team on "Any Given Sunday". Entire industries (and black market economies) are built on suckers misunderstanding the theoretical uncertainties of specific games. Remember that if there wasn't at least a fairly significant amount of overall certainty to apply to the aggregate of games, there wouldn't be a House that you would fantasize about beating. Instead we'd all live in the world described by O, Brother Where Art Thou's classic hobo folk song, "Big Rock Candy Mountain", "Where the handouts grow on bushes."

So while one of the three games in the first stage may be a shock, and the next may be a disappointment, odds are pretty good that the last is going to be about what you'd expect. You can even apply that logic to the seeming randomness of the results in the knockout rounds (or the NCAA March Madness). It's true that you'll pretty regularly get an upset or two (or 4) in the first round, by the time you get to the semifinals, 3 out of the 4 teams remaining will be group winners, or seeded.

Usually they are both, though occasionally you'll see a seeded team that doesn't win a group, or vice versa (the only real exception being Turkey in 2002). It's just too much to ask any but the best of teams with the most experience, and deepest benches, to actually win 4 games in a row against the best in the world.

With that in mind, and yes, hindsight is necessarily 20-20, but still who would have thought that the relatively internationally inexperienced American squad in France 98, drawn from the insular world of US college soccer in the late 80s/early 90s, would have been able to survive the group stage vs. Germany and Yugoslavia, even without what we now know as the fallout from "Captain For Life" John Harkes' inexplicably blind betrayal of teammate Eric Wynalda by having an affair with his wife, a far worse reality than John Terry's current scandal with Wayne Bridge's ex-girlfriend?

Similarly, the only real surprise in our group in 2002 was that co-host South Korea actually won it while Portugal went home, but our mix of European-based, battle-hardened veterans like Claudio Reyna, Brad Friedel, and John O'Brien combined with talented youngsters like Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley was absolutely the logical team to finish second. Beating Mexico in Jeonju was the sweet icing on the cake, but again, the Mexicans have always struggled to convert their dominance at Azteca to any other country, so it shouldn't have come as any great surprise that yet another squad of Los Tricolores disappointed their traveling, sombrero-sporting faithful.

In 2006, American fans were blinded by the remarkable short-handed draw vs. Italy, just as Algerian supporters are this year by their result vs. England, though back then we also had FIFA's incomprehensible pre-tournament over-rating leading to our over-confidence, whereas Algeria has had a shambolic run-up to the Cup ever since they managed to squeak out qualifying over Egypt. It all led to disaster as a clearly nervous and tight unit collapsed before the last hurdle, but just as in 2002, the surprise wasn't really in our result, it was in Ghana qualifying with eventual champions Italy, and ahead of the Czechs.

And yet, whether the US men's national soccer team beats Algeria on Wednesday or not, one thing that is for certain this year is that the sport of soccer in the US will wind up a winner.

As much as I want them to win, it really doesn't matter any longer for the advancement of the sport. If they lose, there will be a shit-storm of criticism from the national sports media at failing to live up to modest and attainable expectations (with the heaviest downfalls likely heaped on the slender shoulders of Landon Donovan), Bob Bradley will lose his job, and the players who will lead the team in Brazil, those currently aged 20-24 (Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley, Stuart Holden, José Torres), plus possibly Tim Howard in his mid-30s, will finally know what it's like to feel the pressure of a nation to perform up to their abilities.

The first two results would be unfortunate, though completely understandable given that the 2010 team is as much Donovan's as it is Coach Bradley's team. The third result though is by far the more important, for it is what will be most responsible for bringing about the maturing of the program into the nascent power that it has become.

The other critical outcome of this game and the tournament as a whole is the maturing of the American soccer audience, most of whom have gone their whole lives far more aware of the game, either having played it themselves, or known people who played it, and even more crucially, have seen it routinely on TV played at its highest level at 5 World Cups now, in addition to all of the major club leagues in the world. It's hard to remember, but prior to 1994, you literally could not find the World Cup on the American TV dial for most of the tournament. Heck, as recently as 10 years ago you had to know which bars to go to, and be willing to get up at an ungodly hour, in order to watch even the English Premier League, or the European Championships.

And as the most sports-crazy country in the world, we know good drama when we see it, idiot soccer naysayers to the contrary. Ninety minutes or so of a soccer game isn't much to expect a sports audience to comprehend that can also appreciate everything from 4 hours of "stock" cars (yeah, right) driving around a track, the springtime ritual of drunken nobility in silly hats and clutching silver cups of sweet, sweet corn liquor watching their 4-legged, multi-million dollar investments participate in one of the 3 events anybody ever really watches, to say nothing of 3-0 Ohio State-Michigan football games, 3-hour pitching duels in the hot sun, the mind-numbing back-and-forth of 100+ shots made in a Lakers-Celtics game, 4 days worth of rich, slightly soft mostly white guys chasing a small round ball around landscape artificially maintained to within an inch of picture perfect non-reality, and on and on, though thankfully curling and ice dancing do appear to still be a bridge too far. Inexplicably however poker and spelling bees still count (at least for the geniuses from Bristol, CT).

We understand getting robbed by umpires and referees. We get pouty, self-involved sports celebrities, who one minute are humbly brilliant, and the next speaking of themselves in the third person, making you just want to punch them in the face to remind them how lucky they are to get to do what they do for a living. We may not have seen Brazil in its heyday (whether you consider that to be 1958, 1970 or 1982), but we have seen Zidane (both imperious and rabid) and Messi (still rising).

We watched a bloodied Brian McBride get patched up and step back on the field vs. Italy in 2006, saw Gregg Berhalter's potential tying goal be saved off the line by the arm of Germany's Torsten Frings in a 2002 Quarterfinal, got the silent treatment from FIFA over Koman Coulibaly's inexplicable rejection of what would likely have been an American game-winner following an unprecedented fight-back from 2 goals down in game 2 vs. Slovenia, and are intimately connected in every way to the tragedy of Andrés Escobar's murder following his own goal for Colombia and their subsequent exit in 1994.

We also know that Jozy Altidore is overdue for a goal (or two), hopefully Donovan and Dempsey each have more in their boots before they hang them up for good (odds are strong that we won't see both a 32-year-old Donovan and 31-year-old Dempsey starting in Brazil-2014), and it'd be real nice to see a shot at heroic redemption for Beasley on the very same field that brought thoughts of his imminent demise a little bit over a year ago when he let a short corner kick skip under his out-stretched foot leading to a Robinho counterattack goal. Plus, Tim Howard is primed for a statement game in nets, even though there really wasn't much he could have done with any of the crap that wound up staring him in the face the first two games.

I'll go out on a limb now and call for another resounding 3-0 victory. The stars are all aligned, and the odds are on our side. Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard are all at the peaks of their respective abilities. Now it's time for some American boys to put the ball in the back of the net and get on with it.