Gooooooooal!

USA beat Spain.

Sounds small. One game. What's the biggie? Understanding the circumstances that it took to get us there... and the Goliath crushing power that even Brazil and Italy bowed down to makes this the biggest soccer story of my life. Or at least bigger than any event on the international soccer stage that I've gleaned from the scarce soccer coverage and despite my undulating interest.

First, how did USA get there? Having already beaten teams from tiny countries, we qualified early to play in the World Cup next year. This was expected to happen, but we're always on our toes because the USA team is finicky and can lose to anyone at any point. Round two we got placed in the most ridiculous group: USA, Brazil, Italy, Egypt. Only two teams advance, so we can basically play hard, let Brazil and Italy go forward and admit that we were out-matched with our heads up looking forward to a more fortunate grouping in the World Cup. As expected, Brazil killed us and so did Italy. In fact, in both games we spent the major part of the clock with a man down due to red cards/ejections. Way to go US, real classy. On the bright side, we gave Egypt a beating. Basically, beating up the little kid allowed us to pass along the pain to a smaller and weaker team. This beat down actually turned out to be useful...

Because the impossible happened. You must first understand that, to any American, soccer tournament rules are confusing and verge on outright ridiculousness. So when Italy got beat in a surprising upset against Egypt with a large point differential, the United States magically moved to second place in our group ahead of Italy. Even though Italy had beaten us Head-to-Head! We had lost to our opponents by few points than Italy, and since the three teams besides Brazil, who was 3-0, were tied with a record of 1-2, we won the point differential tie breaker and eeked into the next round.

Only to play in the Semis against unbeatable Spain-- This is a team that had not lost their last 35 games and is undefeated against the US for a long, long time. In the last couple years, Spain has gained the reputation of being the powerhouse that even Brazil and Italy could not match up to.

And we beat them!!! We weren't even supposed to have made it to this round... it should have been Italy vs. Spain... but we were there and we beat them!!! Finals here we come!!!