When it comes to my sports fandom, soccer is fairly new to the party. I've been watching American football as long as I can remember, and I became heavily invested in baseball and basketball during my adolescence.
I remember watching Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup final, a game widely remembered for Zinedine Zidane's headbutt of Marco Materazzi near the end of extra time. My intrigue with the beautiful game had grown significantly, but it would be almost two more years before I would make a full dive into the sport.
As I do with all decisions significant and quasi-significant - admittedly, my definition of a significant decision is different than most - I parsed out all the details before settling on Chelsea FC as my club team. It was a bit of a labored decision (my old friend, Michael, can confirm) but, in the end, it was a choice I made, free of any outside influence.
I didn't choose to be born in America, but like most American soccer fans, I fell in love with the U.S. men's and women's national teams. Cheering for the USWNT has been about as easy as it gets in sports. The women's team has won three World Cups, four Olympic gold medals and seven Gold Cups since the team played its first competitive match in 1985.
Rooting for Chelsea hasn't been as fruitful, but it's been pretty great. Chelsea have won three of the last eight Premier League titles, and have been in the running for most others. The 2011-12 domestic campaign was not excellent (Chelsea finished sixth) but the Blues won the Champions League that year, erasing all other shortcomings. The only real disaster was the 2015-16 season, in which Chelsea finished tenth, their lowest league finish in two decades.
None of that compares to what happened Tuesday night. For the first time as a soccer fan, I had my sporting heart truly broken.
The USMNT had World Cup qualification in their hands. It would have been the Stars and Stripes' eighth consecutive appearance in the sporting world's biggest tournament. All they had to do was beat Trinidad & Tobago, the 99th-ranked team in the world, a team which had amassed all of three points through nine matches in the final round of qualifying.
Hell, even a draw would almost certainly do the trick. At worst, a draw would have left the Yanks fourth, forcing them into an intercontinental playoff with Australia next month. That's certainly no small task - the Socceroos are not slouches by any stretch of the imagination. But all of this was irrelevant. The Americans had the minnows of the Hex playing a B squad in a match that meant nothing to them. This was a slam dunk.
American center back Omar Gonzalez scored the first goal of the match, just 17 minutes after the opening whistle. Unfortunately, Gonzalez put the ball into his own net after a pathetic clearance attempt was shanked and floated over goalkeeper Tim Howard's outstretched hand. The Soca Warriors would add a second 20 minutes later, thanks to a wonder strike by T&T defender Alvin Jones.
Christian Pulisic, the 19-year-old wunderkind currently starring for German Bundesliga leaders Borussia Dortmund, couldn't save the Americans as he so often has. Clint Dempsey, playing in what will almost certainly now be his final meaningful game for the United States, tried valiantly to give Pulisic the assistance he rarely had in recent months.
It was all too late. Trinidad & Tobago won 2-1, and coupled with results in the other two matches, that loss eliminated the Americans from World Cup qualifying.
Typing it makes me sick all over again. I want to shake myself awake from this footballing nightmare. But I can't, because it's reality. There will be 32 footballing nations in Russia next summer. Some of them will be powerhouses, like Brazil, Spain, and the defending world champions from Germany. Some have never made it to the knockout round, like Iran. Some have never been on the big stage at all, like Iceland.
None of those 32 teams, however, will be from the United States of America. It's incomprehensible right now. The reasons why this happened are innumerable, and will be discussed in another piece I will post on my Medium page in the near future. None of those reasons will lessen the sting of missing out on the World Cup.
Now, I know most of you reading this aren't intimately acquainted with the beautiful game. (I'll save my rant about why you need to pick a team for another time, but I did write a handy guide to picking an EPL team in August. Head over to my Medium page to check it out.) The comparison I'm about to make might trigger some awful feelings from a couple years ago.
While I was planning this post, I wanted to find a way to relate this to my friends and family, most of whom couldn't care less about soccer. It took me a while, but I found a suitable comparison. Please don't hate me for bringing this up.
Watching the U.S. decimate Panama (whose victory Tuesday propelled them into third place in the Hex, and to their first-ever World Cup) last Friday, and subsequently watching the Americans shit the bed Tuesday night in Couva, was like a 96-hour version of the 2014 NFC Championship Game between the Packers and Seahawks.
The win against Panama was the first 55 minutes or so of that game, assuming you're a Packers fan. Your team dominated the run of play, and seemed destined for the biggest competition on offer. Attaining the goal at hand was all but a formality. The players felt it, the fans felt it, and the commentators felt it.
The loss to T&T was the last five minutes and overtime. It was an unexpected, unfathomable result when your team's ultimate goal was just millimeters from grasp. Your heart was ripped out and thrown on the floor in front of you, left bare for everyone to see.
Instead of happening over the course of about half an hour, this gut punching lasted more than 120 minutes. And instead of waiting eight months for a shot at redemption, the Americans need to wait four years.
So here we are, the Americans left to pick up the pieces of a shattered, embarrassing attempt to qualify for a tournament we've made with ease in years past. We'll say goodbye to Tim Howard and Clint Dempsey, not from afar in Russia, but in a meaningless friendly played on American soil. We'll be forced to cheer on secondary teams, selected for various reasons. We'll watch as our confederation is represented by either three or four teams (depending on the outcome of the playoff), none of which will wear the Stars and Stripes.
As so many fans often do, I have a secondary rooting interest linked to my lineage. Luckily for me, that team is pretty damn good, and I'll be cheering on in hopes that Germany can repeat as world champions. Should I be so lucky, my tertiary team, Sweden (also linked to my lineage), may make it to Russia as well. Their inclusion is also dependent on a two-legged playoff.
In years past, I've been able to root for the Yanks and Die Mannschaft simultaneously. It just won't be the same without the United States scrapping their way to points against the world's elite on the biggest state in international soccer.
