World Cup 2006 Group E Preview: United States Of America
Bruce Arena leads his USA side into battle in Germany sitting comfortably as the fourth placed side in FIFAs world football rankings. Whether they deserve such a lofty position (even in the extremely questionable world of FIFA rankings) is debatable but one thing is for sure: the United States are more hopeful tha never of reaching the final stages of the World Cup.
A quarter final defeat to eventual finallists Germany in 2002 displayed just how far the Americans have came since their return to the World Cup in 1990, their first in forty years. Now with growing Major League Soccer attendences and an experienced misture of both European based and homegrown players, they are aiming to go one better in Germany and make it through to the semi finals to really cement their growing reputation as one of the world’s footballing powers.
Football (I can’t bear to call it soccer ) will never be one of the top sports in the USA regardless of the giant leaps it has been making in recent years, it will forever be the doyen of kids and Europeanised real sports fans but another good World Cup would go some way to showing the rest ofthe football loving world that the Americans are no longer a laughing stock and that they don’t even need any shoulderpads or kneepads to compete.
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POSTED IN: Past World Cups
1 opinion for World Cup 2006 Group E Preview: United States Of America
Bald Man
Jun 4, 2006 at 2:06 am
There is no debate: The US doesn’t deserve to be ranked anywhere near #4. I’ll be happy to see them get out of the group.
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