Blitz, thanks! I might hit you up on that even though you don't like soccer. (amazing, considering you have a fantastic domestic league in Germany too!)
Furball, yeah, you definitely had the tougher group to play out of, but you have to admit, going up 3-0 on Portugal (who was a top 5 team at the time) in the first half of the opening game was pretty impressive. We had a let down against Poland, but played extremely well in a 2-0 win over Mexico, who had finished ahead of Italy in group play! We lost to Germany 1-0, in a game in which just about everyone agrees we outplayed them. Oliver Kahn was the man of that game, stopping several sure goals. Also, there was an inadvertant handball on a German defender in the second half that kept the ball from fully crossing the goal line. It was actually hard to tell if the ball was fully in or not, however, even an inadvertant handball that gives a player an advantage (in this case stopping a goal) can be called for a foul. A PK would almost assuredly tied the game (tho who knows, as Friedel stopped 2 PKs himself over the 5 games played!)
Heh, yeah, Seaman was a bit off his line and that cross turned into a goal. I don't think Rivaldo (that's who scored, right?) was shooting, but he got lucky. In our Q-Final, Reyna almost caught Kahn off his line from about 50 yards out, but the ball was wide. That woulda been a hilarious equalizer!
In our friendly this weekend, Landon Donovan did his Michael Owen impersonation with a 50 yard run through 2 defenders and left a 3rd yards behind and slotted one past the keeper. We might have ourselves a world class player in the making.
