Watching Nigeria play Argentina in the men’s soccer final this afternoon at the Bird’s Nest reminded me of a grievous oversight. Sitting in the stands, I was so appalled by the U.S. team's early departure from the tournament last week—2-1 at the feet of Nigeria—that I forgot to vent publicly.
The American team is good enough to compete with most anybody in the youth ranks—the Olympics is a under-23 affair (with three ringers). But it’s not nearly good enough that it can afford the kind of stupidity that in Beijing assured it wouldn’t survive the qualifying round.
Coachs’ sons are expected to be savvier than the average player. But the first dim-witted play came in the game before Nigeria against the Netherlands. In the waning moments, Michael Bradley, son of the coach of the U.S. senior men’s team, took an unnecessary and, even worse, futile, yellow card for delay of game. Granted it might not have mattered had the U.S. hung on to its lead, punching its ticket to the quarterfinals. But the Dutch scored in the final seconds and Bradley, thanks to his second yellow in two games, had to sit out the critical showdown with Nigeria. The 21-year-old is a key cog in the midfield, good enough that a week later he was in the starting lineup for his dad when the U.S. opened World Cup qualifying in Guatamala.
Still, Bradley’s stalling ploy classifies as genius next to the bone-headed retaliatory elbow that got defender Michael Orozco ejected just three minutes into the Nigeria game. The Americans, needing only a tie to advance, were game, but outmanned. And when a late rally fell short—a header clanged off the post—they were headed home.
Orozco compounded his sin afterwards by refusing to express a modicum of regret for his costly foul. But far worse was how coach Peter Nowak praised his team’s efforts in Beijing, acting as if U.S. soccer was still an interloper in the world’s game and couldn’t reasonably be expected to produce anything more than a first-round ouster. Nowak must have been sleeping through his team's brilliant performance against the European U-23 champ Netherlands, when his team looked the equal of any.
Fans of American soccer are used to folks around the world denigrating our game. But it's particularly galling when it comes from our own coach, who should know better. There is no longer any reason to have such meager expectations for a country that, despite its minimal traditions, has usurped Mexico as the leading soccer power in its region. The American game may not yet be at the level where we can expect the team to get out of the qualifying rounds, but it certainly is at the level where we can be disappointed when it doesn’t. While there may still be Pyrrhic victories to come for American soccer, losing in a preliminary round will never again produce one of them.
As for the Nigerian team that the U.S. barely lost to, it proceeded to beat Ivory Coast 2-0 in the quarters and to thrash Belgium 4-1 in the semis before it lost 1-0 to the defending Olympic champion Argentina. Who knows what the United States might have done if it had played with as much brains as it did heart?
The end of the U.S.-Nigeria soccer match. Photo by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK
