It's Getting So Goddamn Annoying Watching The US Men's Soccer Team Suck Against A Team With Any Sort Of Talent When Games Matter

I care deeply about the US Men's soccer team. I can't explain it, outside of being someone who grew up playing soccer, watching the US team in the World Cup and my brain living and dying with matches. I'm of the age where the 1994 World Cup had a lasting impact on the sport for me and even more reason we need to bring back the denim jerseys. The 2002 World Cup was our high. Beating Mexico in the knockout round, getting absolutely screwed against Germany and still thinking we would have had a legit chance of playing in a World Cup final. 

Since then? A lot of the same. Doing just enough to get out of a group stage and crashing out immediately because we shit the bed against a team that has some sort of talent. I bring that up because of what happened this morning at the Olympics. Obviously it's a little different there. It's our U-23 team with 3 players allowed overage. Fine, whatever, every team has this rule. I don't care that Morocco brought in Hakimi from PSG. We need something better than this: 

What happened today was no different of what we're used to. A somewhat bad call to go down 1-0

All I'm saying is if we want to be a serious soccer country we need fans to step it up and start storming the field to protest shit calls against us. Or at the minimum questionable calls against us. This didn't even go to VAR, which apparently only happens after hour long delay. 

Whatever, 1-0 at half. Can come back from that, right? Nope. Not when the US is in the knockout round, instead they give up goals off of mistakes because that's what we do now. 

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I don't know what has to change. I'm not part of the US Soccer Federation (which is a disaster). I mean you have Jesse Marsch saying so and basically anyone who follows the sport knows that Matt Crocker and Cindy Cone haven't done anything that makes you feel great. The chance they had of moving on from Gregg Berhalter after the World Cup resulted in him coming back and Crocker making up something about analytics saying it was smart. People keep talking about too many ties to the MLS and how it's influenced there.

All I know is I'm so fucking sick and tired of watching the same old story. Trying to play it into a success to get out of the group when we were expected to. I know it's been 24 years since we did that at the Olympics but that's more sad than celebratory. I'm tired of trying to get excited about getting out of a group stage and saying 'it's growth for a young team.' I don't care if it's the Olympics, Copa America (couldn't do it there) or the World Cup. Just start competing against teams with talent outside of Mexico.