usa – sweden

oh, just tuned in to a take down in the penalty area. Sweden 1 usa 0…

edit:
I back to wrap it up. USA played a better game in 1st half compared to 2nd half. They’re quite different than Germany in term of not playing at all in the middle of the field. It seems that whenever they won the ball from the back, the next pass is directly up field in the air. They seemed to hope that they’d win the air game and that the crazy bounces of the ball will end their way. Of course some of these crazy bounces did end up with bad clears from the Swedish (or any team they play against) defense.

About crosses coming in from the wings, I think they are not accurate enough (either that or the Swedish did a better job covering USA). In all cases, I love this game partly because it’s such an endurance test with huge fields and 90 min running where anything could happened. So much luck is involved sometimes (in addition to skills). Many times, the best team is not the final winner thanks to miss-chances. And the matches open up nicely (almost) always after the first goal.

Lastly, at least now the darn ESPN commentators can shut up about “germany vs usa in semifinal”, the tune they’ve been singing since the first day (so annoying). that game would be something, USA vs Brazil next Sunday.