Indeed! This actual grandmother really does have on a bikini, competing with others, also fine!! Look closely, VERrrrry closely!
Posted on 06/05/2014 10:44:51 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Klinsmann Offers Brutally Honest Assessment Before Team Even Arrives In Brazil
The United States men’s soccer team has its work cut out for it at the upcoming World Cup.
The United States is in what has been dubbed this year’s “Group of Death,” containing Germany, Portugal and Ghana.
It will be very difficult for the U.S. to get out of Group G, and head coach Jurgen Klinsmann isn’t expecting a miracle in Brazil. In fact, he’s being brutally honest and realistic about his club’s chances.
“We cannot win the World Cup because we are not at that level yet,” Klinsmann said, according to the New York Times. “For us, we have to play the game of our lives seven times to win the tournament.” But part of Klinsmann’s plan is to have the U.S. competing with the best of the best in the future, leading to sustainable success against the most talented teams in the world.
And while he’s tempering expectations, he’s looking forward to seeing how his team faces the daunting challenge head.
“It is one of the most difficult groups of the whole draw,” Klinsmann said back in December, according to Yahoo! Sports. “It couldn’t get any more difficult or any bigger, but that is what the World Cup is all about. We are looking forward to the challenge and we don’t see ourselves as any kind of outsiders. If you want to get into the top 10 or 12 teams in the world you have to beat these guys.”
This year’s squad is very young, which likely explains Klinsmann’s controversial decision to leave 32-year-old Landon Donovan off the roster.
USA, which is No. 13 in the latest FIFA world rankings, will open up group play against Ghana on June 16, then take on Portugal on June 22 before squaring off with Germany four days later.
His son also mocked Donovan being off the team.
Isn't that cicular reasoning? Oh well, it is CBS, after all.
Good that the first game is Ghana. Beat them and the USA has a chance to advance. Lose and it’s all over. Tie against Ghana also probably means it’s all over.
Look, I completely understand that most FReepers don’t follow the USA national soccer team, and your comment shows it . . . .
thanks
Get the hell out. Get out of America... I repeat: Get the hell out.
No. My comment holds regardless of how much I or others here watch USA national soccer.
This is about where we stand, who we back, who we give aid and comfort to when it is our country on the line - in matters great and small.
Didn’t the United States lose to third-world Ghana when the games were in second-world South Africa in 2010?
Sorry, folks, I can’t take this sport seriously when a squad from a country best known for internet scamming beats the U.S. in some second-rate country.
Now they are playing in Brazil — a country so ill prepared to finish their venues that they are leaving design elements off. And let’s not even talk about the corruption that brought the 2022 games to Qatar — a country the size of frigging Connecticut.
Yes, and in the preceding world cup in 2006, as well!
He doesn’t live in America, he lives in Los Angeles.
Thirty-two teams made it through qualifying to this point. They are divided into eight groups of four each. Those groups play within their groups in a round-robin which will eliminate sixteen teams. Following that, the remaining sixteen teams play a single-elimination tournament to determine the champion. In 2010, the US team made it to the round-of-16 before being knocked out. Tougher this time around with having to play Germany (traditional European powerhouse) and Portugal (with Cristiano Renaldo, arguably best player in the world... certainly the prettiest) in the first round (not to mention Ghana).
Indeed! This actual grandmother really does have on a bikini, competing with others, also fine!! Look closely, VERrrrry closely!
What Wilbon is really po’ed about is that a German, a white man, had the unmitigated nerve to voice an oblique-at-best criticism of the almighty (almighty arrogant and ego-centric) Kobe Bryant. (BTW, Klinsman’s comment really reflected on Lakers’ management, not Bryant)
And she was probably not even the winner!
I used to share your attitude about soccer. Most of us like the games we grew up with, and I grew up with basketball, football, and baseball, in that order.
Now that I'm a grumpy old man, I am disgusted at how basketball and football have degraded themselves to chase television dollars. Basketball, the greatest game ever invented, is now almost unwatchable at the NBA and major college level. Football is also a pale shadow of what it used to be. Too many thugs, too many kids with dizzying amounts of money behaving badly, and the integrity of the game undermined by rules changes. I don't remember the last time I tried to watch a football game. I remember flipping the tv on, but I lost interest after the first 30 or 40 commercials. I think they slipped a down or two of football in there somewhere.
Soccer, at least, hasn't sold out to tv.
Then I had two daughters grow up playing youth soccer and I actually watched enough to develop some understanding and liking for the game. Soccer has its problems, as any sport does, but it's healthier than the NBA or NFL. U.S. women's soccer (I have two daughters who play, so we follow the women's national team) is among the best in the world. U.S. men's soccer is a respectable middle tier team, which for us is progress. The top male athletes will still gravitate towards the big money sports, and that will hold U.S. men's soccer back until players are much better paid. But looking at the poisonous effect of tv money on other U.S. sports, I'm not particularly eager for that to happen. If American tv ever gets its hands on soccer, we'll have commercial breaks on every throw in.
That’s the beauty of the game. You don’t have to be a huge, sports-minded powerhouse country to field a good soccer team.
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