What a day. The US win and two other important, meaningful World Cup games and history on the grass at Wimbledon. This was a great day to be a sports fan. First, read this.
Soccer defies that. It is opera on a field. Not the Italian variety where a series of humorous misunderstandings yield mildly sexy results, but German opera—Klingon opera. Plenty of tridents. Sheets of rain. Thunderbolts cascading from the sky. In the background armies march through the mud, toward each other. Patterns converge in a rumble, pressure building until it’s unbearable and someone falls over, a spear jutting out from his breastplate.
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The USA’s narrative has been bootstraps. College kids rescuing the program, batty goalies with an American flag fetish, Paul Caliguri, and so on. Tom Friend just published a lengthy story on USA 1990 third-string goalie David Vanole that’s veritably dripping with half-truths dedicated to shaping that narrative. The USMNT is the 1980 hockey team spread over twenty years, because that’s the way we want it.
We don’t roll around on the ground. If we fall over, we probably just fell over. We run and and run and run, and late, when everything is stacked against us in a game where it’s just so hard to finish the job, we do it Puritan style: ugly effort. A minute into stoppage time, the ball’s just lying there and it’s all about who will get there first.
The defensive shakeup for the Americans didn’t hurt, though it came to resemble an open scramble, as much of a track meet as you ever wish to see on the pitch. The Algerians are just begging to give this game away, but the referee has, again, interjected.
There are too many dives, too many questionable calls. This game is a microcosm of the entire tournament. Though a purely representative challenge at midfield would be both symbolic and useful in a game that is starting to grind. Ian Darke asks about our nerves; he’s really telling us that his are shredded.
Clint Dempsey is bloodied. The man is bleeding, marching down the field. Ultimately he is fed a ball in the box and he and the goalkeeper maul one another. Dempsey goes into the net, Landon Donovan takes the rebound and … well, the announcer for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation calls it best:
Soccer is a communal game. If you’re watching at home you aren’t really seeing everything. Check out a big game in a crowd. Like Spencer Hall, who live-blogged the game. With others you can know the frustration, the elation, the relief and joy. In the 90th minute, plus three, the United States went from going home early (a big disappointment) to winning the group (something they haven’t done since 1930’s inaugural World Cup).
And then there was Wimbledon. I’m not a big tennis fan, but watching a piece of history is something I’ll tune in for. The John Isner and Nicholas Mahut match became easily the longest tennis match ever. In fact, today this set alone became the longest match ever. So I have a new proposal: When the tiebreaking game reaches 25-25 we start pulling strings out of the rackets.
Serves dominate. Both players are exhausted. Volleys are rare. Oddly, neither tennis player have fallen, grabbed their ankle and rolled around in anguish while covering their smiling face.
Someone is updating Isner and Mahut’s Wikipedia pages as their death march continued past the nine hour mark. Nine hours! The grass on the Mahut-Isner court has been worn down. And is now growing back. There’s no real at-this-rate of progression in this match any longer. It is stasis and progress rolled into a singularity. Is the hadron collider on?
We’re beyond the point where one of these guys is secretly admitting to himself — and the Smurfs sitting on the net because they must both be delusional — that they hate tennis. I compiled a list of things I’ve done for long stretches of time than this tennis match: slept, studied, breathed. That may be about it.
I’m secretly cheering for Isner, who just looks out on his feet, to pull out the American Gladiators tennis cannon. And then, finally, Mahut surrenders to the darkness. The crowd is chanting for more, but they will have to wait until tomorrow, day three of this epic contest. Records have been crystallized, frozen and shattered in the wake of this pull of equal forces. Neither of them know it yet, but these two young men will be forever attached to one another. I hope they get along.
Meanwhile, as Wimbledon stops for the night, there are two excellent finishes simultaneously in the World Cup between Ghana/Germany and Australia/Serbia. The U.S. will face the Ghanaians for the second consecutive World Cup. And if the ride is finished here this team will have done a lot for the game at home. But you have this feeling that they might be able to ride their spirit just a little farther, yet.
